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Ancient Classics for English Readers 

EDITED BY THE 

REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 



TACITUS 



The Volumes published of this Series contain 

HOMER : THE ILIAD, by the Editor. 
HOMER : THE ODYSSEY, by the Same. 
HERODOTUS, by George C. Swayne, M.A. 
CAESAR, by Anthony Trollope. 
VIRGIL, by the Editor. 
HORACE, by Theodore Martin. 
^ESCHYLUS, by Reginald S. Copleston, M.A. 
XENOPHON, by Sir Alex. Grant, Bart., LL.D. 
CICERO, by the Editor. 
SOPHOCLES, by Clifton W. Collins, M.A. 
PLINY, by A. Church, M.A., and W. J. 

Brodribb, M.A. 
EURIPIDES, by William Bodham Donne. 
JUVENAL, by Edward Walford, M.A. 
ARISTOPHANES, by the Editor. 
HESIOD & THEOGNIS, by James Davies, M.A. 
PLAUTUS & TERENCE, by the Editor. 

The following Authors, by various Contributors, are 
in preparation : — 

LUCIAN. 

PLATO. 

THE GREEK ANTHOLOGISTS. 

GALEN & HIPPOCRATES. 

Others will follow. 

A Volume will be published Quarterly, price $1.00 



TACITUS 



BY 



WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE 



PHILADELPHIA 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1873. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

CHAP. I. LIFE OF TACITUS, 1 

C 
ii II. 'AGRICOLA,' 14 

it III. THE * GERMANY,' 38 

n IV. THE 'ANNALS,' 53 

TIBERIUS. 

it V. THE 'ANNALS,' 84 

CLAUDIUS— NERO. 

ti VI. 'HISTORY,' 106 

GALBA— OTHO. 

II VII. 'HISTORY,' ....... 126 

VITELLIUS. 

II VIII. 'HISTORY,' 146 

VESPASIAN. 

H IX. ON THE ORATORS ; OR THE CAUSES OF THE 

DECLINE OF ELOQUENCE, . . .167 

n X. THE HISTORIAN, .«•••• 183 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The writer desires to express his obligations to Dean 
Merivale for trie permission granted by him to employ 
the ' History of the Romans under the Empire ' as a 
guide in many portions of this book. Also, he acknow- 
ledges his debt to Messrs Church & Brodribb for their 
kind consent — conveyed by their publishers, Messrs 
Macmillan & Co. — to his availing himself of their 
admirable translations of the l Agricola/ ' Germany/ 
and ' History ' of Tacitus. For the ' Annals/ the Ox- 
ford translation, and, on one or two occasions, Mr 
Murphy's, have been used. In the chapter entitled 
"The Orators," the citations are a paraphrase, not a 
translation. 

That a far larger space is assigned to the e History ' 
than to the ' Annals ' may require some explanation. 



vi AD VER TISEMENT. 

The earlier written of these works is generally the far 
less commonly known of the two. The later, besides 
its length, demands far more scrutiny and sifting than 
the ' History/ and to be fairly represented, would 
have required more space than could be afforded — 
perhaps even a volume of the series for itself alone. 



TACITUS. 



CHAPTER L 



LIFE OF TACITUS. 



The birth -year of Tacitus can only be conjectured — in- 
deed the little that is known of him personally is mostly 
derived from the letters of his friend, the younger 
Pliny, the date of whose birth helps us towards at least 
surmising that of the historian. Pliny was born in 6 1 or 
62 a.d., since he was in his eighteenth year when the 
famous eruption of Vesuvius took place, a.d. 79. Now, 
in a letter from him to Tacitus, he writes : "When I was 
a very young man, and you were at the height of your 
fame and reputation, I earnestly desired to imitate you." 
The historian himself affords us a few glimpses at his 
public life. " My elevation," he says, " was begun by 
Vespasian." Again, we know on his own authority 
that he was praetor in 88 a.d., and on that of Pliny 
that he was consul in 97. Comparing these state- 
ments with each other, it is perhaps not rash to infer 
that Tacitus was by several years Pliny's senior. We are 
therefore inclined to fix 51 instead of 54 a.d. — the date 
usually assigned — as the year in which he was born. 
a. c. vol. xvii a 



2 TACITUS. 

His birthplace is unknown, nor can anything certain 
be told about his family. Some circumstances make 
it likely that the members of it were well to do in 
the world, if not highly distinguished, at least until he 
made the name of Tacitus memorable fnr all times. He 
rose rapidly in his public career ; anc shat is hard for 
obscure and needy men to do. He married into a 
family of some rank ; and in his writings he displays 
no token of the poverty that made bis contemporaries, 
Martial and Juvenal, the one a flatterer of the great, 
the other a satirist of the wealthy and well-born. His 
abode, in early years at least, and possibly until he 
had passed middle life, was apparently either in Eome 
or its immediate neighbourhood. For not only would 
his practice at the bar, and the public offices held by 
him, make it necessary to have a house in the capital, 
but there are some indications of his being in it even at 
the time of Galba's death. The ' History ' bears several 
traces of his presence in Eome during that disastrous 
year in which four emperors contended for the purple, 
and, all but one, found the reward of their ambition in 
a violent or a voluntary death. 

The public life of Tacitus dates from the later years 
of Vespasian's reign. His second patron was Titus 
Flavius, who, happily for himself, did not live long 
enough to forfeit his title of " Delight of Mankind." 
Not until we come to the fourteenth year of Domitian 
do we stand on firm ground as to his preferments. It 
is not easy to understand his relations to the third of 
the Flavian Caesars. " I deny not," he says, " that 
my elevation was begun by Vespasian, continued by 
Titus, and still farther advanced by Domitian." So 
far, then, all the Flavian Caesars and Tacitus were on 



LIFE OF TACITUS. 3 

good terms. Yet if the character he draws of Domi- 
tian in the 'Agricola/ or where there is occasion to 
mention him in the * History/ he a portrait and not a 
caricature, it is hard to conceive how he managed to 
serve such a master without flattering him as Martial, 
Statins, and other poets of the age did ; or, if he did 
not flatter him, how he contrived to keep his head on 
his shoulders. There is no doubt that in the year 
88 he was Prsetor, and assisted as one of the fifteen 
officials (quindecemviri) at the celebration of the secu- 
lar games in that year. 

Eleven years earlier, in 77, Tacitus was betrothed to 
the daughter of Julius Agricola, and in the next year 
they were married, just before his father-in-law left 
Rome to govern Britain. It is pleasant to infer from 
his writings that his marriage was a happy one ; or 
that at least he had no cause for repenting of it. 
Speaking of his betrothed he says of her that she 
was "even then a maiden of noble promise." Both 
Agricola and his son-in-law were, to all appearance, 
fortunate in their partners for life. Not many of his 
friends and acquaintance were perhaps so lucky, since 
it was an age when to divorce a wife or a husband 
was nearly as common as to take one, if there be 
any truth in the verse of Martial or Juvenal, or in 
the anecdotes of Suetonius. A son who died in his 
infancy was the only fruit of Tacitus's marriage. The 
emperor of that name is reported to have claimed 
to be a descendant of the historian; and Sidonius 
Apollinaris, a writer in the fifth century of our era, 
addresses a letter to Polemius in which he reminds him 
of his illustrious ancestor, Tacitus. On grounds equally 
slender a father has been found for the historian, one 



4 TACITUS. 

Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman knight and procurator in 
Belgic Gaul, mentioned by the elder Pliny. Yet it 
is strange that the younger Pliny never alludes to the 
procurator, who from his position can hardly have been 
a person quite obscure. In fact, Tacitus was not an un- 
precedented name, and Cornelius was a very common 
one in Italy. 

On the expiration of his prsetorship he would 
seem to have left Rome, and not to have returned 
to it until after Agricola's death, a.d. 93 — an absence 
of at least four years. If he followed the ordinary 
course, he would be appointed on the expiration of 
his office to some provincial government. But whi- 
ther he went, or how he employed himself during 
his absence from the capital, is not on record. 

Credible testimony there is, conveyed by himself, 
that he was at Rome during the later and the 
worse period of Domitian's reign. " Our hands " 
(those of the senators), he writes in his ' Life of Agri- 
cola/ " dragged Helvidius to prison ; we witnessed the 
fate of Mauricus and Rusticus ; we were steeped in 
Senecio's innocent blood." Now and then the descrip- 
tion of signal and stirring events is so vivid in Tacitus's 
pages that it is difficult not to believe them to have 
been traced by the hand of an eyewitness. The 
passage of the ' Agricola ' just cited bears the marks of 
his presence in the senate when Domitian's victims 
were dragged away to die. 

And yet, in spite of the doubt and darkness that 
hang over his personal history, Tacitus was a "celebrity" 
in Italy at least, and in the literary circles of Rome. 
That he was so is plain from the often repeated story 
of the recognition of his name by a stranger to his 



LIFE OF TACITUS. 5 

person. The stranger and himself happened to sit he- 
side each other among the spectators of the games of 
the Circus, and for some time relieved the tediousness 
of familiar and brutal exhibitions by discussing literary 
subjects. The stranger, a Eoman knight, at length 
asked his neighbour on the bench whether he were a 
Eoman or a provincial 1 Tacitus replied, " You are 
acquainted with me and by my pursuits." " Are you, 
then," was the rejoinder, "Tacitus or Pliny?" But 
such notoriety was probably due to his reputation as an 
orator, not as an historian. His ' Agricola ' and ' Ger- 
many ' alone were not likely to have carried his name 
so widely abroad as this anecdote implies, and the 
1 Annals ' and i History ' were never ranked among the 
popular literature of either the capital or the provinces. 
With Domitian expired, and for a long series of 
years, the worst effects of Csesarianism ; and the Eoman 
world, for the first time since the death of Augustus, 
enjoyed the advantages of a strong and just though 
still irresponsible government. The senate was once 
again treated with respect, was relieved from anxiety 
about the lives or property of its members, was in- 
trusted with a large share in the administration of 
public affairs, and found in the emperor a president, 
and not a master or an assassin. " Xow, at last," 
writes Tacitus, exulting in his relief from personal 
fears for his friends or himself, " our spring is return- 
ing. We enjoy the rare happiness of times when we 
may think what we please, and express what we 
think." The cloud of apprehension, indeed, is not 
quite lifted. Nerva was an old invalid, Trajan was a 
warrior, and the chances of war might deprive Eome 
of his services. " And yet," continues the biographer 



6 TACITUS. 

of the brave and moderate Agricola, "though, at the 
dawn of a most happy age, Nerva Caesar blended 
things once irreconcilable — sovereignty and freedom — 
though Nerva Trajan is now daily augmenting the 
prosperity of the time ; and though the public safety 
has not only our hopes and good wishes, but has also 
the certain pledge of their fulfil men t, still, from the 
necessary condition of human frailty, the remedy works 
less quickly than the disease." The profound melan- 
choly of these words will be obvious to every reader. 
He had lived to witness a senate honoured ; the prae- 
torians and the legions kept under restraint ; the 
informers (delatores) banished or silenced ; the people, 
if not content, controlled by an effective police ; the 
provinces equitably ruled ; the Caesar, in semblance 
at least, only the first citizen ; thoughts no longer 
manacled ; Jbooks no longer burnt in the forum, or 
nsed as evidence of treason against their authors. 
Yet he could not hide from himself the precarious 
tenure of these blessings. The happy age that 
had dawned rested on a foundation of sand. 
Among the senators might lie hid, in case of 
another revolution — and Tacitus had witnessed the 
untimely ends of four Caesars — another voluptuous 
Nero, another timid and sanguinary Domitian. The 
freedom which depends on the character of the reigning 
sovereign is ever uncertain. Even Caligula and 
Nero for a while ruled well. The conduct of Tra- 
jan made vain the apprehensions of Tacitus. But the 
experience of his earlier days affected all his later 
ones, and he never quite reconciled himself to a 
Caesar in the place of elective consuls, or to a privy 
council in that of a senate. 



LIFE OF TACITUS. 7 

In the second year of Trajan's prmcipate, Tacitns 
was one of the consuls. The office indeed was only 
the shadow of a once mighty name, and the duties 
of it were merely nominal. Yet it was still an 
honourable distinction and a permanent advance in 
social rank. The only recorded act of Tacitus in his 
consulship was his delivery of the funeral oration 
over the body of Virginias Eufus, one of " the noblest 
Eomans of them all " in that degenerate age. " Ever 
benign to this octogenarian hero/' — who, besides the 
usual perils of his calling, had thrice escaped from 
the fury of mutinous legionaries, — " Fortune," says 
Pliny, " reserved her last favour to him, that of 
being commemorated by the greatest of living ora- 
tors." 

In 99 a.d., Tacitus, now proconsul, was joined with 
Pliny, then consul - elect, in managing the impeach- 
ment of ^larius Priscus for high crimes and mis- 
demeanours committed by him while governor of the 
province of Africa. In spite of powerful advocacy 
and interest, the culprit was condemned. The pro- 
secutors — the injured Africans — gained their suit, but 
apparently little else ; for Marius, after paying heavy 
law expenses, and doubtless also as heavy bribes to 
some of the jury, lived very comfortably in exile upon 
the residue of his ill-got gains. He was infamous 
enough to be specially mentioned by the contemporary 
satirist : — 

-" By a juggling sentence doomed in vain 



(For who, that holds the plunder, heeds the pain ?) 
Marius to wine devotes his morning hours, 
And laughs in exile at the offended powers ; 



8 TACITUS. 

While, sighing o'er the victory she has won, 
The province hnds herself the more undone." 

— Juvenal, Sat. I. [Gifford.] 

Pliny, in his description of the trial, says that 
Tacitus answered Salvius Liberalis, the counsel for 
the defendant, " most eloquently, and with that dig- 
nity which belongs in a remarkable degree to his ora- 
tory." The two illustrious pleaders received a vote of 
thanks from the senate for their exertions in the cause. 
From this moment Tacitus departs from sight. There 
is indeed a slight trace of him in one of Pliny's letters, 
from which it appears that he was not at the time 
resident in Rome, nor very well supplied with news 
from it. And as we are unable to do more than 
surmise the date of his birth, so we must leave to 
conjecture that of his death. He lived long enough 
to complete, with one exception, the works he pro- 
jected. He is the chronicler of the Caesars from the 
death of Augustus to the accession of Nerva. " I have 
reserved," he tells us, " as an employment for my old 
age, should my life be long enough, a subject at once 
more fruitful and less anxious in the reign of the 
divine Nerva and the empire of Trajan." He may 
have rested from his labours before he began this 
work ; or he may never have seriously meant to write 
it. Even of good Caesars it might not always be 
prudent to speak the truth, and Tacitus may have 
thought himself living too near the time of his pro- 
posed narrative to write with impartiality about even 
a Trajan. 

In the failure of materials for his life, we may 
endeavour to learn something of Tacitus from himself. 
If it be true that every great portrait-painter intro- 



LIFE OF TACITUS. 9 

duces upon his canvas something of his own nature, 
it is also true that every great historical writer infuses 
into his narrative something of his own feelings. It 
cannot escape any attentive reader of the ' Annals/ 
in which the writer's proclivities are far more patent 
than in the ' History/ that he was an aristocrat, in the 
sense that the proud Appian, Fabian, and Claudian 
houses were of old. Although firmly convinced that 
the vast body of the empire could be effectively 
governed by one hand alone, he accepted a Caesar as 
a necessity of the time. But to be resigned to a system 
of rule is one thing \ to regard it with an eye of favour 
is another. Many who loved Cromwell little, served 
him well. It was no small recommendation of Trajan 
to Tacitus that, departing from the solemn injunc- 
tion of Augustus not to extend the borders of the em- 
pire, he added to it provinces north of the Theiss and 
east of the Euphrates. At last there was a Caesar 
treading in the steps of the Scipios and Paulus 
iEniilius. And yet, notwithstanding his military 
virtues and the temperate character of his civil admin- 
istration, it was not Trajan, but the consuls and senate 
of the past who had the historian's real allegiance. His 
contempt for the nobles among whom he sat in the 
great council -chamber at Rome only increased his 
admiration for the Conscript Fathers whom the Epirot 
envoy likened to a conclave of gods ; and who bated 
not a "jot of hope or heart" when Pyrrhus was 
within a few miles of Rome or Hannibal at her gates. 
The mongrel populace of the capital, with its greed 
for bread and the games, he contrasted with the people 
that once supplied the pith of the legions, and who, 
although often turbulent and factious, were proud of 



10 TACITUS. 

their nobles and jealous of the honour of the Common- 
wealth. The Gracchi he viewed with dislike, since it 
was owing to their measures that the way was pre- 
pared for Caius Marius and the first Caesar. The 
brother tribunes were the beginners of that evil end 
which Tacitus so deplored. By them and their mis- 
chievous laws the free Republic was turned into an 
absolute and irresponsible despotism, and the weal 
of millions intrusted to the discretion of one man. 
The reputation of Tacitus appears in his own time to 
have rested entirely on his powers as an orator. A 
few intimate friends indeed were forming high expec- 
tations of the history he had in hand • and Pliny, we 
know, supplied some materials for a work which he 
correctly judged would be immortal, but which he less 
correctly anticipated would be immediately popular. 
It is strange that of an orator so renowned as he 
seems to have been not a line of his speeches 
remains, although there exist fragments of those of 
the Gracchi and Cato and Marius. Of the char- 
acter of Tacitus's oratory we have only one hint. 
" Dignity " was its most remarkable feature ; and 
" dignity " seems to have struck Sidonius Apollinaris 
as the leading characteristic of the historian, since, 
when giving a list of the most eminent Eoman 
authors in prose or verse, he mentions the stately 
march (pompa) of the style of Tacitus — " a name," he 
adds, "never to be uttered without a tribute of ap- 
plause." The speeches assigned by the historian to 
some of the persons in his narratives may have been 
cast in the mould of his own eloquence ; and if so, 
then we may easily understand why " dignity" is 
ascribed to his public pleadings. 



LIFE OF TACITUS. 11 

If we infer the disposition of Tacitus from the report 
of his oratory, or the study of his works, we shall 
regard him as a grave and sarcastic personage ; and 
yet the inference might he wrong. The admiia- 
tion, the affection of Pliny for his friend, the deep 
feeling with which Tacitus narrates the life and death 
of Agricola, the evident pleasure exhihited hy him 
when delineating characters eminent for virtue, forbid 
us to imagine him austere or morose. But there 
are people, amiahle and calm in disposition, who, 
when they take a pen into their hand, display a stern 
and acrid temper, more especially if they have a 
grievance or a theory to expound. Lack of preferment 
cannot have "been among the causes for the gravity or 
despondency of Tacitus, for he had held the highest 
office of the State next to " great Caesar's," and bore 
ever after the rank and title of a Consular. 

There are men who live in the past — not merely 
students whose world is their library, but such as have 
taken a share in the business of the present time, and, 
nevertheless, yearn for days that cannot return. Was 
Tacitus of this class of men] More than once in his 
' Annals ' he appears to have been so. The chronicler 
of Tiberius, he says, has fallen on an evil time. " I 
am aware " — glancing, perhaps, at the more fortunate 
Livy, who could be a Pompeian without giving offence 
to Augustus — " that most of the transactions which I 
have related, or shall hereafter relate, may perhaps 
appear unimportant, and too trivial to be recorded. 
But none must compare these my Annals with the 
writings of those who compiled the history of the 
ancient Eoman people. They had for their subjects 
mighty wars, cities sacked, kings routed and taken 



12 TACITUS. 

captive ; or if they turned from these to treat of do- 
mestic affairs, they had before them an unlimited field 
for digression in the dissensions between the consuls 
and the tribunes, the agrarian laws, the corn-laws, and 
the contests between the commons and the patricians. 
The matter on which I am occupied is circumscribed 
and unproductive of renown to the author — a state of 
undisturbed peace, or only interrupted in a limited 
degree, the sad condition of affairs in the city, and a 
prince indifferent about extending the bounds of the 
empire."* He sighed for the brave days when some 
province almost yearly was annexed to the common- 
wealth. The manly virtues of a past age blinded him 
to its faults, and in his aversion to a single rule he 
forgot the vices of a divided one. 

The names of some of his friends have been pre- 
served — that of Justus Fab ius, to whom he addressed 
the ' Dialogue on the Orators/ and that of Asinius 
Rufus, both friends also of Pliny. From Pliny we 
derive the best part of our slight knowledge of the 
historian, to whom he addresses eleven of his letters. 
Between him and Tacitus the strictest intimacy ex- 
isted. Each of them submitted his writings to the 
other's inspection, and Pliny is never weary of ap- 
plauding the harmony, frankness, and good faith which 
pervaded their intercourse from first to last. Pliny 
ever prophesied great things of the historical works 
on which Tacitus was engaged, and furnished him with 
materials, as, for example, two letters on the eruption 
of Vesuvius. Of the two we know not which was 
the survivor, but we are able to say that no cloud 
ever dimmed the brightness of their friendship. 
* Annals, iv. 32. 



LIFE OF TACITCS. 13 

So well known, indeed, was their affection for each 
other, that they were jointly remembered in people's 
wills, and for equal legacies, unless the testator chanced 
to be especially a friend to .either. Pliny, indeed, 
intimates (Epist. vii. 20) that " there lacked not those 
who were preferred to one or both of them," but, as 
for himself, he um [ rrmly asugixd the precedence in 
all things to his beloved friend. 



CIIAPTER 1L 

' AGRICOLA. , 

This book is intended to perpetuate the memory of 
its authors father-in-law, of whom it is justly said 
that " one would easily believe him a good man, and 
willingly believe him a great one." " To bequeath," 
writes Tacitus, at the opening of it, i% to posterity a 
record of the deeds and characters of distinguished 
men is an ancient practice, which even the present 
age, careless as it is of its own sons, has not 
abandoned whenever some great and conspicuous 
excellence has conquered and risen superior to that 
failing common alike to petty and great states, blind- 
ness and hostility to goodness. But in days gone 
by, as there was a greater inclination and a more 
open path to the achievement of memorable ac- 
tions, so the man of highest genius was led by the 
simple reward of a good conscience to hand on without 
partiality or self-seeking the remembrance of greatness." 
In very early times, when perhaps writing was not a 
common accomplishment, — for consuls who handled 
well the spade can hardly have been very adroit with 
the pen — biographies took mostly the form of funeral 
orations, and of their partiality or inaccuracy Livy 
complains. So far from supplying the historian with 



'agricola: 15 

trustworthy materials, they misled and perplexed him 
in his researches. Whether, as manners "became more 
corrupt, biographers grew more veracious, cannot he 
told. 

Cnaeus Julius Agricola was horn at the ancient and 
famous colony of Forum J alii — the modern ' Frejus.' 
Each of his grandfathers was an imperial procurator 
— that is, of the highest equestrian rank. His father, 
Julius Graecinus, was of even higher station, since he 
was a member of the senatorian order. Graecinus was a 
distinguished orator and philosopher, but these good 
gifts excited the envy of Caius Caesar, who took the 
first convenient opportunity of getting rid of him. 
His mother, Julia Prociila, was a matron of the 
old Roman stamp. Under her wise and watchful 
guardianship, Agricola imbibed in early youth the 
virtues which he practised in mature years. In 
a period notorious for extravagance and excess of 
every description — vices that extended even to 
learning and philosophy — Julia kept always in 
view the wholesome doctrine of "a golden mean/ 
While pursuing his studies at Massilia (Marseilles), 
— one of the great universities of the empire- -he 
manifested a keen relish for merely speculative sub- 
jects — more, indeed, than his mother approved. 
She destined the apt pupil for practical life. She 
looked forward to his serving his country in the senate 
and the field. She knew, perhaps too well, that the 
philosophers of the time were often idle dreamers, 
and sometimes arrant knaves. From each of the four 
great schools he might derive some wholesome rules 
for the conduct of life, but no one of them would fit 
him for commanding a legion, or for becoming a great 



16 TACITUS. 

advocate, or a great lawyer. This philosophical 
tendency — the only excess ascribed toAgricola — "was 
soon corrected by reason and experience, and he re- 
tained from his learning that most difficult of lessons 
— moderation." 

An untimely end was in store for this exemplary 
matron. After Nero's death, the empire was torn in 
pieces by civil wars. The fleet of Otho, one of the 
three competitors for the purple, " while cruising 
idly about, cruelly ravaged Yintimiglia (Intemelii), a 
district of Liguria, and Julia, who was living there 
on her own estate, was murdered, and the estate itself 
and a large portion of her patrimony were plundered." 
Britain was to Eome in those days very nearly 
what Algeria is now to France, — a school of war, 
and a nursery of recruits. It was there that 
Agricola served his military apprenticeship. His first 
commander was Suetonius Paulinus, a diligent and 
judicious officer, who, probably discerning in the 
young man great capability for his profession, made 
choice of him to share his tent. This mode of initia- 
tion for an officer bears some resemblance to the prac- 
tice of the feudal times, when the sons of good families 
were trained for warlike or civil duties at the court of the 
king or in the castle of some powerful baron. " Agri- 
cola," we are told by his biographer, " without the 
recklessness with which young men often make the 
profession of arms a mere pastime, and without 
indolence, never availed himself of his tribune's 
rank, or his own inexperience, to procure enjoyment 
or to escape from duty. He sought to make him- 
self acquainted with the province and known to 
the army ; he would learn from the skilful, and keep 



< agricola: 17 

pace with the "bravest ; would attempt nothing for dis- 
play, would avoid nothing from fear, and would be at 
once careful and vigilant." 

When Agricola was in the tent or on the staff 
of Paulinus, there was much to do and much to learn 
in Britain. The victories that had been won in the 
island by the generals of Claudius had been rendered 
nearly ineffectual by the subsequent rebellion of the 
British people. " Never," says Tacitus, " was the island 
in a more disturbed or critical condition." " Veteran 
soldiers had been massacred, colonial towns burnt, vast 
districts of the open country ravaged, and armies cut 
off." It was a sound though a severe school for a 
young officer, and he learnt in it " skill, experience, 
and a desire to rise in his profession (ambitio)" 

Nearly every Eoman was expected to combine a 
civil with a military career. From Britain Agricola 
went to Rome, to go through the ordinary routine 
of office. He was appointed quaestor, and the ballot 
assigned to him Asia for his province and Salvius 
Titian us for his proconsul. The young officials of 
Rom*: seldom returned from an Eastern province 
the better, except in pocket, for their sojourn in it. 
The morals of Roman Asia were even worse than 
the morals of the capital. The province itself was 
wealthy, and the inhabitants of it were regarded as 
fair prey for old or young gentlemen whose creditors 
were troublesome. Agricola, however, according to 
his biographer, did nothing to be ashamed of in his 
quaes torship. 

He married, at Rome, Domitia Decidiana, a lady 
of illustrious birth. Their union was a very happy 
one. They had two children — a son, who died in 

a. c. vol. xvii. b 



18 TACITUS. 

his infancy, and a daughter, who was married to 
Tacitus. 

His prcetorship, also, was nearly a sinecure. He 
exhibited, as his office bound him to do, some Games ; 
and in all matters of ceremony he kept up the dig- 
nity of a first-class public magistrate, erring neither 
on the side of profusion nor on that of parsimony. 
By such comparative insignificance he may have 
escaped unpleasant collision with the Caasar or his 
favourites. For in Nero's reign, more especially in 
the later years of it, to keep out of that tyrant's sight 
as much as possible was the wisest course that high 
officials, civil or military, could follow. Nero's imme- 
diate successor, Servius Galba, must have had a good 
opinion of Agricola's probity, since he appointed him 
one of the commissioners for inspecting the accounts 
of the offerings and deposits at various temples in 
Rome or the provinces. All that Nero had appro- 
priated had been dissipated beyond recovery ; and 
it was one of the deepest offences given by the unfor- 
tunate Galba that he tried to compel the ministers 
and freedmen of Nero to refund his bounties. In 
other respects the commissioners reported favourably 
on the condition of ecclesiastical property, and so 
were able to exonerate the conscience of the State 
from the burden of sacrilege. Tacitus commends the. 
" searching scrutiny " of Agricola ; yet since, in so 
delicate an investigation, it might not have been diffi- 
cult to " cook the accounts," his colleagues must surely 
have been as honest as himself. 

He was hurrying from Rome to pay the last honours 
to his mother, when a messenger overtook him with the 
tidings that Vespasian was a candidate for the throne. 



'AGRICOLA.' 19 

He at once joined the Flavian party. The deeds of 
Vespasian in Britain alone were well known to one who 
had served in that island himself, and the new Ca3sar's 
renown had recently been increased by his conduct in 
the Jewish wars. The emperor had not yet quitted the 
east, or at least had come no nearer Rome than Alex- 
andria. He at once despatched Agricola to recruit the 
legions in Britain. The twentieth legion had reluc- 
tantly taken the oath of allegiance to Yespasian ; and 
the tribune whom Agricola succeeded in the command, 
had fostered in the soldiers a spirit of insubordination. 
Accordingly, it can have been no easy task, and it 
may have been a perilous one, to restore discipline. 
During that chaotic period of civil wars the legionaries 
had frequently risen against their generals ; had some- 
times murdered, had often expelled them, not un- 
wounded, from the camp ; and had freely shed the 
blood of the centurions and other officers. Once 
more Agricola's discretion and even temper prevailed, 
and the Twentieth appears to have been reconciled to 
the new dynasty. 

Yespasian knew how to appreciate a good officer, 
and Agricola's promotion rapidly followed. Returning 
from Britain in 73 a.d., he was appointed to the 
important province of Aquitania and raised to the 
rank of a patrician. His provincial government lasted 
three years ; and in 77 he was recalled to Rome, where 
he was invested with the consular robes and adopted 
into the college of augurs — an honourable and not quite, 
an empty distinction, since it empowered the com- 
mander of an army to take the auspices whenever 
it might be advisable to soothe the fears, to re- 
press the zeal, or stimulate the valour, of the legion- 



20 TACITUS. 

aries. Britain, the scene of his past services and of 
his future fame, was assigned to him as his province. 

The new proconsul found, on his arrival in his 
province about the midsummer of 78, much work 
to be done, and also much to be undone. The soldiers 
were demoralised, the Britons were biding their time, 
and the Boman officers generally were flattering 
themselves that the subjugation of the islanders was 
complete. So far was it from being so, that some 
tribes were actually under arms, and others preparing 
to try once again the fortune of war. A serious loss 
had been sustained by the Bomans shortly before 
Agricola's arrival. The Ordo vices, seated between 
Cardigan Bay and the river Dee, had cut to pieces a 
squadron of cavalry quartered in their territory, and it 
was difficult at the instant to get a fresh supply of 
horses ; for the small breed, or rather the poni js, of 
Britain, were not suited for cavalry. The hopes of 
the Britons had revived by their success. They 
anxiously watched the temper of their new governor. 
Would he be a corrupt and slothful, or an able and 
strenuous administrator? — for ihej had experienced 
both kinds. Should they hasten or defer their long- 
intended revolt, then simmering over nearly all the 
island from the Humber to the straits of Dover? 

The summer of 78 was verging on autumn before 
Agricola was ready to open the campaign. Nor at first 
did he meet with very zealous support. The soldiers of 
many divisions had promised themselves the pleasure 
of inaction and free quarters for that year at least, 
while many of the officers urged him to be content for 
the present with watching the movements of the 
British chieftains. But Agricola resolved to face the 



'.gricola: 21 

open or secret peril immediately. His first act was 
nearly to exterminate the Orclo vices. Yet prompt and 
sharp as this retaliation was, it was a two-edged weapon. 
It might intimidate or it might more deeply incense 
the Britons. The victory must be followed up. The 
next blow was stricken in the same quarter, and the 
little island of Mona (Anglesey), which Suetonius Paul- 
inus had taken, but had been compelled by a rising of 
the eastern tribes to abandon, was again annexed to 
Roman Britain. This time, the natives made but a 
feeble defence of the sacred island, although the 
assailants laboured under the grave disadvantage of 
being without a fleet. " The skill and resolution of 
the general accomplished the passage. With some 
picked men of the auxiliaries, disencumbered of all 
baggage, who knew the shallows and had that national 
experience in swimming which enables the Britons to 
take care not only of themselves, but of their arms 
and horses, he delivered so unexpected an attack, that 
the astonished enemy, who were looking for a fleet, 
and an assault by sea, could not imagine anything 
would be formidable or invincible to such assailants/' 

Let the reader observe that Agricola's success was 
mainly owing to the skill of British auxiliaries in 
" swimming." It is an undesigned evidence that the 
tribes of Britain were employed by Roman generals 
against their own countrymen, just as native regiments 
in our Indian wars are employed as auxiliaries. The 
recovery of Mona immediately increased the fame and 
stamped the character of Agricola as an energetic 
soldier. Other proconsuls, if we may accept the state- 
ment of a panegyrist, had idled their time away " in 
vain display " and a round of ceremonies, whereas ho 



22 TACITUS. 

" chose rather toil and danger," and kept in the field 
at a period — the autumnal equinox — when it was the 
usual practice of commanders to withdraw into winter 
quarters. 

In the next summer, 79 a.d., Agricola advanced 
northward into the territory of the Brigantes, aud un- 
dertook the organisation of the district, lately reduced, 
between the Humber and the Tyne. To protect these 
new subjects of the empire from the incursions of the 
barbarians who roamed the Cheviots and the Pentland 
hills, he drew a chain of forts from sea to sea. In 
80 he moved further northward, still consolidating his 
acquired land ; and in 81 he pushed along the eastern 
coast as far as the Firth of Forth, building forts and 
making roads at every step of his progress. All the 
country south of the Forth was now occupied by 
lionian garrisons, and " the enemy were pushed into 
what might be called another island." For a moment 
the empire seemed to have found its northern limit. 
The fifth year of his proconsulship was engaged in 
strengthening his position between the two isthmuses, 
and in reducing the western side of the new domain. 
From the Mull of Galloway he discovered an island 
hitherto unknown to Eoman navigators. " The grassy 
plains of teeming Hibernia," says Dean Merivale, 
" offered a fairer prey than the grey mountains which 
frowned upon his fresh intrenchments, and all their 
wealth, he was assured, might be secured by the valour 
of a single legion. But other counsels prevailed, and 
Ireland, so the fates ordained, was left to her fogs and 
feuds for eleven more centuries." 

But while Agricola was engaged in consolidating his 
northern province, and securing it by walls and forts 



*agricola: 23 

against inroads, the Caledonians, mistaking his two 
years' inaction for exhaustion or fear, resumed their 
courage. He returned, therefore, to offensive mea- 
sures. Understanding them to he preparing to make 
a combined attack on his lines, he anticipated them 
by a rapid incursion into the regions beyond the Forth. 
The land was for the most part a barren waste ; the 
enemy was numerous and able to cut off even the 
scantiest supply of food, and the army must therefore 
be furnished with a commissariat. This could be sup- 
plied by a naval armament alone. Such an armament 
accordingly was fitted out, and moved parallel to his 
flank as he marched along the coast of Fife. Prisoners 
reported that the Britons were astounded at the sight 
of the fleet, and saw r that if their bays, creeks, and 
the mouths of their rivers were open to invasion no 
refuge would remain for themselves. Surprised they 
may have been by this novel aspect of war, but they 
were not disheartened, nor was their strategy that 
of ignorant barbarians. They would not meet the 
advancing legions, but got between them and the forts 
in their rear, so that in case of a defeat the retreat of 
the Eomans would be cut off. On learning that the 
Caledonian attack would be made with more than one 
army, and taking into account their superior numbers 
and knowledge of the ground, Agricola distributed his 
forces in three divisions, and so advanced to the en- 
counter. With the exception of a heavy loss sustained 
by the ninth legion from a sudden assault in the 
night, the defeat of the Britons was a signal one, and 
" had not the flying enemy been sheltered by morasses 
and forests, this victory would have ended the war." 
We are now on the verse of the most animated and 



24 TACITUS. 

interesting portion of this biography. Hitherto, so far 
as Agricola is concerned, we hare read the names of 
tribes or clans only, and not till his seventh campaign, 
in 84 a.d. do Ave meet with an individual man worthy 
to stand, beside Caractacus and Boadicea ; at least we 
must suppose Tacitus to have believed in the person- 
ality of Galgacus, since he puts a speech, and to us a 
very instructive one, in his mouth. It is valuable on 
two accounts : on the one hand it gives a notion of 
Tacitus' s own eloquence, pregnant with thought, con- 
densed in phrase, sagacious in its views, epigrammatic 
in its periods ; on the other, we may discern in the 
w r ords ascribed to Galgacus some prevision of an ap- 
proaching revolution in the fortunes of the historian's 
own countrymen. After referring to the sufferings 
already endured at Roman hands by every tribe of 
Britons, to the cruelty, rapacity, and lust of their op 
pressors, Galgacus proceeds . to hint that there is a 
worm in the bud of the un wieldly empire. 

" Do you suppose," he is made to say, "that 
the Romans will be as brave in war as they are licen 
tious in peace 1 To our strifes and discords they owe 
their fame, and they turn the errors of an enemy to 
the renown of their own army — an army which, com- 
posed as it is of every variety of nations, is held 
together by success, and will be broken up by disaster. 
These Gauls and Germans, and, I blush to say, these 
numerous Britons, who, though they lend their lives 
to support a stranger's rule, have been its enemies 
longer than its subjects, you cannot imagine to be 
bound by fidelity and affection. Fear and terror there 
certainly are, feeble bonds of attachment : remove them, 
and those who have ceased to fear will begin to hate." 



<agricola: 25 

With the hattle of the Grampians,* and the rout of 
Galgaeus and the Caledonian army, Agricola's military 
career "virtually closed, although he remained in his 
province a few months after this signal victory. If we 
may give implicit credence to one so nearly connected 
with him, Agricola may rank with Cicero, as an excep- 
tion to the ordinary class of Roman provincial governors. 
Never relaxing in vigilance, and only once taken un- 
awares by the enemy, he restored discipline in the camp, 
and explored the estuaries and forests on his route. 
" Many states, hitherto independent, gave hostages, and 
laid aside their animosities. Garrisons and forts were 
established among them with a skill and diligence with 
which no newly-acquired part of Britain had before 
been treated." 

The civilising power of Eome furnishes the bright- 
est chapter in her annals. It was by her institutions, 
far more than by her arms, that the nations of the em- 
pire melted away into the Roman name and people. 
" Wheresoever the Roman conquers he inhabits," is 
a very just observation of Seneca ; and he might 
have added that wherever he inhabited, at least in 
the northern and western provinces, he disseminated 
the arts of peace and the boon of a refined and uniform 
language. It could not escape a sagacious and humane 
proconsul that territory acquired by war would be 
best maintained by introducing a taste and a demand 
for the luxuries of the conqueror, and not the luxuries 
only, but greater skill in agriculture and new systems 
for conducting public business. " In order," says 

* The " Mons Grampius" is said now to be an error of 
transcription, the real name given by Tacitus being "Mons 
Graupius." 



26 TACITUS? 

Tacitus, "to accustom to rest and repose through, the 
charms of luxury a population scattered and bar- 
barous and therefore inclined to war, Agricola gave 
private encouragement and public aid to the build- 
ing of temples, courts of justice, and dwelling-houses, 
praising the energetic and reproving the indolent. 
Thus an honourable rivalry took the place of com- 
jjulsion. He likewise provided a liberal education 
for the sons of the chiefs, and showed such a pre- 
ference for the natural powers of the Britons over the 
industry of the Gauls, that they who lately disdained 
the tongue of Rome now coveted its eloquence. Hence, 
too, a liking sprang up for our style of dress, and the 
■ toga ' became fashionable. Step by step they were 
led to things which dispose to vice — the lounge, the 
bath, the elegant banquet. All this, in their igno- 
rance, they called civilisation, when it was in fact but 
a part of their servitude." 

He consulted alike for the good conduct of his army 
and the convenience of the Britons. He kept his 
household under restraint, a thing as hard to many as 
ruling a province. Neither freedmen nor slaves were 
allowed to assist in transacting public business — a vir- 
tue which his Eoman readers could more thoroughly 
appreciate than his modern ones. Promotion he deter- 
mined by merit alone • impartial himself, he listened 
not to the prayers or recommendation of his friends. 
As regarded the nations — "he lightened the exaction 
of corn and tribute by an equal distribution of the 
burden, while he got rid of those contrivances for gain 
which were more intolerable than the tribute itself." 

Agricola was recalled in a.d. 84, having been in his 
province nearly eight years. Tacitus insinuates that 



'AGRICOLA. 27 

Domitian feared lest his victorious and popular lieu- 
tenant might prefer security in Britain to very possible 
danger at Home. But whether the emperor were 
jealous of him or not, Agricola, a man of the old Ro- 
man stamp, " knew how to obey as well as to com- 
mand." To soothe his mortification, if he felt any, at 
being ordered to resign, a freedman was sent to him 
with the tempting offer of the government of Syria. 
The messenger was charged not to deliver the letter if 
he found the proconsul ready to obey. Agricola never 
saw the imperial rescript; it was brought back un- 
opened to the Caesar — the ex- proconsul was already 
crossing the Channel on his way Home-ward. 

With his recall from Britain ended the public 
life of Agricola. He prudently avoided all display : 
he entered Rome after nightfall, so as to shun a 
reception by his friends or the populace : at night 
also he went to the palace, and after a hurried 
embrace from Domitian, who deigned not a word to 
his ex-viceroy, he mingled in the crowd of courtiers. 
Henceforward he studiously shunned publicity. Sim- 
ple in dress, courteous in conversation, accompanied 
by two or three Mends, he excited the surprise of a 
people accustomed and not unfavourable to ostenta- 
tion. " Can this," they said, " be the hero of a hun- 
dred fights I Can this be the man who has really 
conquered those warlike islanders, whom the mighty 
Julius left to their original freedom, and whom Clau- 
dius and his captains imperfectly subdued ? " " The 
many," says Tacitus, " who commonly judge of great 
men by their external grandeur, after having seen and 
attentively surveyed him, asked the secret of a great- 
ness which but few could explain." 



28 TACITUS. 

And yet not even his modesty and retirement ex- 
empted Agricola from danger. While in Britain, 
he had often been a mark for informers, though he 
was uniformly acquitted. So far at least Domitian 
deserves credit for turning a deaf ear alike to those 
who accused, or to those who insidiously extolled the 
absent proconsul ; " for," Tacitus justly remarks, " the 
worst class of enemies" under a despotism " are the 
men who praise." 

One more offer of preferment was made to Agri- 
cola. The year, the fifty-second of his age (90 a.d.), had 
arrived in which the proconsulate of Asia or Africa 
was to fall to him by lot. Perhaps his friends, cer- 
tainly the voice of the people, called on him to accept 
this office, for both of them contrasted his vigour, 
firmness, and experience in war, with the inertness and 
timidity of other generals. His enemies, however, on 
this occasion were his better counsellors. Knowing 
Domitian' s reluctance to employ him in any high office, 
they artfully contrived to lead Agricola himself to re- 
fuse it. They tendered their services in procuring 
acceptance for his excuse ; and at last, throwing off 
all disguise, brought him by entreaties and threats to 
Domitian. The excuse was offered, was accepted, 
and the Caesar thanked for his gracious condescen- 
sion. However, notwithstanding his supposed envy 
and hatred of the man, Domitian " was softened 
by the moderation and prudence of Agricola" — 
and Tacitus closes this section of the Biography 
with one of the many pregnant observations that, 
well understood, throw such light on Csesarian 
history, as well as afford a clue to his own opinions. 
" Let it be known," he says, " to those whose habit it 



1 agricola: 29 

is to admire the disregard of authority " (the political 
Stoics of the time), " that there may be great men even 
under bad emperors, and that obedience and submis- 
sion, when joined to activity and vigour, may attain a 
glory which most men reach only by a perilous career, 
utterly useless to the State, and closed by a death in- 
tended for effect. " The gist of this sentiment often 
appears in both the ' History ' and ' Annals/ " Good 
people," thought Tacitus, " are scarce enough in such 
evil times • why, by self-destruction, will they make 
the number even fewer 1 " 

Agricola died in the fifty-sixth year of his age. 
There was a rumour of his having been poisoned. 
His son-in-law declines giving an opinion on the sub- 
ject. Tacitus himself was far away from Eome at the 
moment. Yet there was a report of foul play — and a 
report was a temptation which the historian rarely re- 
sists. It looked very suspicious that " during the whole 
of Argicola's illness the emperor's chief freedmen and 
confidential physicians called more frequently than is 
usual with a court which pays its visits by means of 
messengers." Such departure from imperial routine had 
an ugly favour — and, to do the Roman people justice, 
it must be allowed that they were as credulous in 
believing rumours as the Parisian people are now, and 
have ever been. It is superfluous to canvass the truth 
or falsehood of a story for which the biographer 
himself will not vouch. The dying Agricola did 
not fail to remember Domitian in his last will 
and testament. He made him co-heir with his 
excellent wife and most dutiful daughter, and the 
emperor expressed his delight at so handsome a 
bequest. Perhaps the widow Domitia Decidiana and 



30 TACITUS. 

her daughter fared nut the worse for this parting com- 
pliment ) and even Tacitus himself may have been 
indebted to it for protection from informers, and thus 
survived to paint the last Flavian Caesar as a second — 
and even a worse — Nero. He winds up his account 
of Agricola's last moments with these words : " So 
blinded and perverted was Domitian's mind by in- 
cessant flattery, that he did not know it was only a 
bad emperor whom a good father would make his 
heir." 

The concluding sections of the 'Life of Agricola' have 
in all times been regarded among the noblest samples 
of historical eloquence. After recounting Agricola's de- 
meanour in his last hours, the tender care of his most 
loving and faithful Decidiana, and his own and his 
wife's grief at their absence from his dying bed, the 
biographer proceeds : " If there is any dwelling-place 
for the spirits of the just; if, as the wise believe, 
noble souls do not perish with the body, rest thou 
in peace ; and call us, thy family, from weak regrets 
and womanish laments to the contemplation of thy 
virtues, for which we must not weep nor beat 
tl*e breast. Let us honour thee not so much with 
transitory praises as witli our reverence ; and, if 
our powers permit us, with our emulation. That 
will be true respect, that the true affection of thy 
nearest kin. This, too, is what I would enjoin on 
the (laughter and wife, — to honour the memory of 
such a father, such a husband, by pondering in their 
hearts all his words and acts, by cherishing the features 
and lineaments of his character rather than those of 
his person. It is not that I would forbid the like- 
nesses which are wrought in marble or in bronze ; but 



'AGRICOLA. 31 

as the faces of men, so all similitudes of the face are 
weak and perishable things, while the fashion of the 
soul is everlasting, such as may be expressed, not in 
some foreign substance, or by the help of art, but in 
our own lives. Whatever Ave loved, whatever we 
admired in Agricola, survives, and will survive in the 
hearts of men, in the succession of the ages, in the 
fame that waits on noble deeds. Over many, indeed, 
of those who have gone before, as over the inglorious 
and ignoble, the waves of oblivion will roll ; Agricola, 
made known to posterity by history and tradition, 
will live for ever." 

To English readers Agricola is naturally one of the 
most interesting persons in Eoman annals, since he 
was the first to disclose to Caesar and Europe the 
extent and value of the youngest of Roman provinces. 
He has commonly the credit of being the first circum- 
navigator of our island ; but of late years this opinion 
has been considerably modified. The insular character 
of Britain had been asserted ever since the time of 
Caesar ; but Dion Cassius, an historian of the second 
century of our era, is the first to relate that Agricola's 
fleet, in the year 84 a.d., sailed completely round it. 
But it should be borne in mind that Dion flourished 
more than a century after the supposed circumnaviga- 
tion took place, and at a time when the form and 
dimensions of Britain were well known, and its roads 
and principal harbours were laid down in the Itinera- 
ries. Unfortunately the text of Tacitus is corrupt 
just where we need it to be clear, and we cannot pro- 
nounce from his narrative whether he described Agri- 
cola's naval officers as having completed or merely 
forwarded the discovery. He tells us that after Agri- 



32 TACITUS. 

cola's seventh, campaign closed with the summer of 
84 a.d., he directed the fleet, which had hitherto 
accompanied the movements of his army, to proceed 
northward, and, besides striking terror in the still 
unconquered Caledonian tribes, to collect for him such 
information as he needed for his next movements in 
the summer of the ensuing year. Now it is im- 
portant to bear in mind that the fleet began its voyage 
northwards at the beginning of autumn, and also that 
Roman mariners rarely, except under strong pressure, 
put out far to sea, but usually hugged the coast from 
headland to headland. Moreover, an expedition begin- 
ning after the short summer in that high latitude was 
past, would encounter the equinoctial gales near at 
hand. We have no reason to suppose that Agricola's 
ships did not return in good condition to their winter- 
harbour in the Forth : accordingly their exploring 
errand can hardly have occupied more than a few 
weeks, a period much too brief to allow not very bold 
or skilful sailors to circumnavigate so large an island, 
to say nothing of October tides, the fogs of the Irish 
Channel, and the fact that there were no charts to 
guide them, and possibly also no experienced or trust- 
worthy pilots to be found. The opinion of Dean 
Merivale on this subject is favourable to a certain 
amount of new discovery, but adverse to a complete 
one. " The Roman mariners," he says, " now for the 
first time entered the Pentland Firth, surveyed and 
counted the Orkney Islands, and gained perhaps 
a glimpse of the Shetlands. They ascertained the 
point at which Britain terminates northward, and 
possibly noted the great deflection of the coast south- 
ward from Cape. Wrath. Having effected the object 



<agricola: 33 

of the expedition," — that of informing their com- 
mander-in-chief how far his next summer's advance 
might extend, — "they returned, as I cannot doubt, 
still creeping timidly, as was their wont, from head- 
land to headland, and having hugged the eastern 
coast from Caithness to the Firth of Forth, were 
finally drawn up for the winter on the beach from 
which they had been launched at the commencement 
of the season." ..." The demonstration thus 
obtained was itself regarded as a triumphal achieve- 
ment, and Agricola was celebrated by his countrymen 
as an explorer as well as a conqueror." * 

The appellation of " conqueror " is justly due to Agri- 
cola for his achievements north of the Humber, where 
he reduced to at least a temporary submission the pre- 
sent districts of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumber- 
land, and for his success in the hitherto untrodden 
ground of Caledonia. Still greater praise than that 
accorded him for his victories in the field, belongs to 
him for the care he took to secure and consolidate his 
acquisitions. With the patience and precaution of a 
Wellington, he never made an advance without pre- 
viously providing for the safety of his army in flank 
and rear, and he employed for that end the constant 
Roman method of laying down roads and building a 
chain of forts linked to one another by walls of earth 
capped and faced with stone or solid brick-work. 
" Struck perhaps with the natural defences of the line 
from the Tyne to the Sol way, where the island seems 
to have been broken, as it were, in the middle, he drew 
a chain of forts from sea to sea to protect the reclaimed 
subjects of the southern valleys from the untamed 
* History of the Romans, vii. 89. 

a. c. vol. xvii. 



34 TA CITVS. 

barbarians who roamed the Cheviots and the Pent- 
lands." * 

The Koman generals who preceded Agricola are 
briefly enumerated by Tacitus. In south Britain the 
progress of the invader was slow, and checked by many 
serious reverses, but it was sure. Aulus Plautius was 
the first governor of consular rank, and he was most 
effectively seconded by Flavius Vespasian, then " first 
shown to the fates." In our island he learned or prac- 
tised the art of war, which he so brilliantly employed 
afterwards against an infuriate and despairing foe 
in Palestine, and which, combined with his civil 
merits, finally elevated him to the purple. Plautius 
defeated the Trinobantes, under their leaders, Car- 
actacus and Togodunmus, the sons of Cunobelin, 
one of the most powerful of the British kings. His 
capital was Camulodunum — Colchester. Plautius, how- 
ever, appears to have penetrated from the eastern 
counties to Gloucestershire ; and his lieutenant, Ves- 
pasian, " crossing the banks of a broad river," [the 
Severn ?] to have led his detachment over the Welsh 
border. Our readers would probably owe us small 
thanks were we to trace the march of the legions over 
uncertain ground. The success of his proconsul was 
sufficient to induce the not very youthful and un- 
wieldy Claudius to cross the channel and to take part 
in the war. From the movements of his general we 
might expect that the Caesar would proceed at once 
from his landing-place in Kent to Gloucestershire. 
On the contrary, he went into Essex, and routed the 
Trinobantes, in the camp which they had drawn 

* Merivale, vii. 1. 



<agricola: 35 

around Camulodunum — so bewildering is our informa- 
tion on the Eoman campaigns in Britain. 

On his return to Eome, Claudius eelebrated a 
triumph which he had fairly earned, for his conquests 
were really solid and extensive ; and had not his 
lieutenants relaxed in their vigilance, or had they 
been better acquainted with the character of the 
natives, a considerable portion of Britain south of the 
H umber would have quietly submitted to the yoke of 
the Eomans. But the victors had still a lesson to 
learn. The easier portion of their task was to en- 
counter the enemy in the field : to follow him into 
the forests and morasses, to detect and suppress 
promptly his cabals, and break up his confederacies, 
were labours yet to be undergone, and disaster far 
more than success was to be the instructor of a series 
of proconsuls. 

In the year 47 a.d., Plautius was succeeded by 
Ostorius Scapula, who signalised his command by 
founding the colony of Camulodunum, and receiving, 
from a traitor's hand indeed, the surrender of Caracta- 
cus. The next distinguished proconsul was Suetonius 
Paulinus, whose name is inseparably connected with 
his defeat of the Britons in Anglesey (Mona), his sup- 
pression of the revolted Iceni, and the romantic story 
of Boadicea. " But for him," Tacitus says, " Britain 
would have been lost/ 7 The fury of the Iceni was 
especially directed against the colony at Camulodunum. 
It was a monument of their humiliation : so long as 
it stood, freedom was hopeless — the ground on which 
it was built had been wrenched from them — it was 
the abode of those whom they hated even more than 
the legionaries, the collectors of tribute ; and in it 



36 TACITUS. 

towered the great temple of Claudius, a perpetual in- 
sult to the deities of the land. The city, betrayed by 
the Trinobantes, was assailed by the Iceni. The gar- 
rison was feeble : the fortifications were hastily run 
up at the last moment : the troops which might have 
defended it were in remote quarters ; and on the second 
day of the siege the stronghold was stormed, and all 
who had sought refuge in it, armed or unarmed, were 
slaughtered. 

This was the last signal calamity that befell the 
Eomans in Britain, and it was speedily avenged. Sue- 
tonius, in spite of his great services, was recalled. He 
appears to have been better suited for the rough work 
of war than for the delicate office of soothing the con- 
quered, and reconciling them to their new masters. 
Under his successor, Petronius Turpilianus, victors 
and vanquished enjoyed without abusing them two 
years of peace, and Eoman civilisation began to exer- 
cise its influence on Britain. 

Under the successors of Agricola, the southern Britons 
generally acquiesced in the dominion of Eome, and 
the northern were awed by her prowess, or won by 
her arts. Commerce tended to efface the ravages of 
war. The products of the island, consisting chiefly 
of raw materials, found a ready market in the cities 
of Gaul ; the youth of Britain were drafted into the 
legions and dispersed over the wide circumference of 
the empire in the camps of Egypt, Africa, and Syria, 
while at the same time natives of other lineage, and 
speaking strange languages, were imported into an 
island which a century earlier had been described as a 
new and scarcely habitable world, 

" A hope is expressed," says Gibbon, " by Pompo- 



<agricola: 37 

nius Mela, a geographer who wrote under Claudius, 
that by the success of Eoman arms the island (Britain) 
and its savage inhabitants would soon be better known. 
It is aninsing enough to peruse such passages in the 
midst of London." Perhaps what has least ehanged in 
the island since Tacitus commemorated the deeds of his 
father-in-law is the weather. " Severity of cold," he 
remarks, " is unk li o vm, but their sky is obscured by 
continual rain and cloud." The historian's opinion, 
however unpalatable to ourselves, is still an article of 
faith in many European lands ; and indeed we Deed 
not go further than Paris to be told that the sky which 
obscured the camp of Agricola still hangs over our 
shires and cities. 



CHATTEL lit 

THE 6 GERM ANY.' 

A passage in this treatise on trie manners and social 
condition of the Germans, affords a clue to the date of 
its composition. " Koine," says Tacitus, " was in her 
640th year, when we first heard of the Cimbrian in- 
vader in the consulship of Csecilius Metellus and 
Papirius Carbo, from which time to the second consul- 
ship of the Emperor Trajan, we find to be an interval 
of about 210 years." Consequently it was under its 
author's hand at least in the year 98 a.d. 
» And here our positive information about the ' Ger- 
many' ends. It has been pronounced to be a geo- 
graphical and ethnological essay ; a chapter, or a draft 
of one, intended for insertion in some historical narra- 
tive, or a satire on Roman morals as well as a record of 
German manners. If the ' History ' had come down to us 
unmutilated, the problem might very likely have been 
solved. Tacitus delighted in episodes on the character 
of foreign nations. We have a fragment of one in his 
account of the Jews ; had he composed his projected 
life of Trajan there would possibly have been a special 
account of the Parthians ; and we may owe this treatise 
on the Germans to the interest awakened in him when 



the 'Germany: 39 

a young man by the revolt of some Teutonic races in 
the wars that followed Nero's death in 68 a.d. 

For supposing a satirical element in the ' Ger- 
many ' there is plausible ground. His praise of the 
German wife is a scarcely concealed reproach of the 
Roman matron of his time. The Germans, he tells 
us, made no wills ; the legacy - hunters of Rome 
were as notorious as the informers. The Roman 
nobles were often deeply in debt, and money-lenders 
were many and troublesome ; whereas the virtuous 
Germans, at least of the interior — for those on the 
eastern Rhine - bank were beginning to be civil- 
ised and corrupted — cared little for gold or silver ; 
and, indeed, were such outer-barbarians that their 
chieftains held the silver cups and salvers which 
praetors or proconsuls had given them as cheap as those 
of clay ! Asain, they were not at all, in respect of 
funerals, " noble animals, splendid in ashes and pom- 
pous in the grave." * They did not heap garments or 
spices on the funeral pyre ; they simply observed the 
custom of burning the bodies of illustrious men with 
certain kinds of wood. A turf mound formed their 
tombs ; monuments, with their lofty and elaborate 
splendour, they rejected as oppressive to the dead. 
Whereas Pliny the elder says that the amount of 
spices consumed at Poppeea's (the wife of Nero) fun- 
eral exceeded a whole year's produce of Arabia — an 
exaggeration, probably, yet not an insignificant one. 
More instances of the contrasts between Roman and 
Teutonic manners might be culled from the ' Ger- 
many.' In fact, when two extremes of civilisation 

* Sir T. Browne's 'Urn Burial. ' 



10 TACITUS. 

are brought into immediate contact with each other, 
it is difficult to avoid a semblance of satire. 

Leaving now the question of the drift of Tacitus in 
writing his ' Germany/ we proceed to examine its con- 
tents. He closes the 27th section of it with these 
words : " Such, on the whole, is the account which I 
have received of the origin and manners of the entire 
German people." Evidently he had consulted either 
eyewitnesses of the " people," or writers on the subject, 
and one very voluminous author may possibly have 
been among his instructors. So intimate a friend 
of the younger Pliny can hardly have been quite 
unacquainted with the elder. Now Pliny the nat- 
ural historian, at the age of twenty-three, served in 
Germany. He wrote also a history of the Germanic 
wars in twenty books, and, as was his laudable fash- 
ion, collected his materials for them when he was on 
the spot, for his nephew tells us that he commenced 
his work before returning from Belgium to Rome. 
Curious as he was on ethnological matters, he can 
hardly have spoken of Germanic wars without some 
mention of the Germanic races. But whether Tacitus 
were indebted to Pliny or not, the second part of this 
treatise is more perplexing than useful to ethnologists, 
although it has long been a field for much controversy 
about German names, places, and pedigrees. For such 
inquiries, indeed, with a few exceptions, the ancients 
were very poorly equipped. Both Greeks and Romans 
looked down with contempt on all languages except 
their own, and thus deprived themselves of une of the 
most valuable pass-keys to a history of nations. 

The Germany described by Tacitus is bounded on 
the west and south by the Rhine and the Danube ; 



THE 'GERMANY. 1 41 

on the east by the Dacians and Sarmatians ; and on 
the north and north-west by the ocean. But this area 
is far too large if we admit into it pure German races 
alone. In the time of Domitian or Trajan but little 
was known of the population near the Elbe, still less 
of that between that river and the Vistula. Roman 
generals, indeed, had penetrated the country as far as 
the left bank of the Elbe ; but they speedily withdrew 
from it, and had little leisure, whether advancing or 
retreating, to make themselves familiar with the inha- 
bitants, their manners or modes of life. Such know- 
ledge as they picked up consisted of reports given by 
spies or deserters, by guides who very likely purposely 
misinformed them — for ignorance in a Roman was 
security for the German — or by such adventurous 
hawkers and pedlars as brought to these savage or 
semi-savage regions the luxuries of more civilised 
lands. There is reason for believing Tacitus to 
have confounded Sclavonian with German tribes. 
Almost the entire region east of the Elbe Avas inhabited 
by the former people alone — some centuries later it 
certainly was so ; and there is neither record nor tradi- 
tion of the Sclaves having expelled the Teutons be- 
tween the first and ninth centuries of the Christian era. 
Ancient historians, when they met with a people 
whose origin they could not trace, and whose manners 
and institutions puzzled them, generally put them down 
as sons of the soil — aborigines : and Tacitus is not an 
exception to this easy mode of meeting a difficulty. Of 
the Germans he writes : "I regard them as aboriginal, 
and not mixed at all with other races through immigra- 
tion or intercourse." Having in mind probably the 
maritime Greeks and the Phoenicians, he proceeds : " In 



42 TACITUS. 

former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that 
those who sought to emigrate would arrive ; and, beside 
the perils of pough and unknown seas, who would leave 
Asia or Africa or Italy for Germany, with its wild 
country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners and 
aspect, unless it were his home ? " He is nearer the 
truth in saying that the name Germany is modern and 
newly introduced. It was introduced, however, by 
foreigners, but not accepted by the Germans. No 
common collective term was used by them. 

The same physical peculiarities throughout the vast 
population of Germany confirm him in his persuasion, 
that " the tribes of Germany are free from all taint of 
intermarriage with foreign nations — a distinct, un- 
mixed race like none but themselves." Their common 
characteristics are these : " All have fierce blue eyes, 
red hair, huge frames, fit only for a sudden exertion. 
They are less able to bear laborious work. Heat and 
thirst they cannot in the least endure ; to cold and 
hunger their climate and their soil inure them." 

The debilitation of the German soldiers by heat is 
more than once mentioned by Boman historians. To 
his statement that the eyes of the Germans were grey 
or blue and fierce in expression, and that, compared 
w T ith Italians, they were " more than common tall," 
there is nothing to object ; but we protest against his 
assertion that their hair was universally red. Had he 
been more polite or zealous for truth, he would have 
limited redness and its usual accompaniment freckles to 
the male sex alone. The Latin poets are far more civil, 
and doubtless more just, than the historian on this im- 
portant point. The yellow hair and blue eyes of their 
German female captives excited the admiration of the 



THE 'GERMANY: 43 

young men of Rome, and the envy of both old and 
young women. Some of our English readers may be 
surprised, and perhaps will be glad to be told that the 
auburn tresses of the Germans fetched a high price in the 
Roman market ; and that the locks which belonged by 
birth to the wife or daughter of a Teutonic warrior or 
herdsman, often belonged by purchase to some dark- 
haired Cynthia, or Lesbia, or Clodia. Again — and 
purely they knew better than Tacitus could — the old 
German poets adorned the most beautiful of their 
heroines witli flowing yellow tresses. So omnipotent, 
indeed, in Domitian's time was the fashion, that ladies 
who could not afford to buy a Teutonic wig dyed 
their natural hair auburn or yellow. 

But although the Roman ladies imported the orna- 
ments of their German sisters, they were not, it seems, 
equally zealous in copying their housewifely virtues. 
Their marriage code was strict ; so, indeed, had that of 
Rome once been. Divorce among the Germans was 
very rare : and when a sentence of it was inflicted, the 
punishment was little inferior, if at all, to that of death. 
There w T as no occasion to call in the aid of the civil 
magistrate. The husband was sole judge of his wrong. 
The culprit was expelled from his house in the presence 
of her kinsfolk, her hair was shorn, her garments were 
torn from her back, and she was fiogged through the 
whole village. And the divorce was once and for ever : 
her crime met with no indulgence : the Germans had not 
arrived at the age of sentimentality ; " neither beauty, 
age, nor wealth would procure the repudiated wife a 
second husband/ In some states the marriage law or 
usage was even more stern, and Tacitus considers these 
states the happiest. In them maidens only were given in 



44 TACIT VS. 

marriage, and however young they might become widows, 
they remained widows for life. This was indeed a severe 
and not very intelligible restraint among a people who 
were always fighting either with wild beasts or with men 
nearly as savage. A defeat or a victory, a herd of buffa- 
loes or of wolves, might easily decimate the population of 
a village, and the number of widows be more than that 
of wives. However, it was not the men only who were 
exposed to the chances of war. Women were com- 
monly spectators of their husbands' prowess, and " tra- 
dition says that armies already wavering and giving 
way, have been rallied by women, who, with earnest 
entreaties and loud shrieks, and bared bosoms, vividly 
represented the horrors of captivity, which the Ger- 
mans fear with such extreme dread on behalf of 
their women, that the strongest tie by which a state 
can be bound is the being required to give, among the 
number of hostages, maidens of noble birth.' 7 

Whether the life of a German woman were happier 
in peace than in war, it is difficult to say. When not 
engaged in fighting or hunting, the men did nothing 
except eat, drink, and sleep. The management of the 
Teutonic household and of the land was made over to 
the women, the old men, and all the weakest members 
of a family. Their agricultural toil was probably slight 
enough, since they scratched rather than ploughed the 
ground, and the crops of wheat and rye were conse- 
quently as small as can well be imagined. Their barley 
crop was doubtless better, since they extracted from 
that grain a fermented liquor bearing a certain resem- 
blance to wine. Of this beverage Tacitus speaks with 
seeming contempt, as all dwellers in a wine land are 
wont to do of beer or ale potations. He adds, to show 



THE 'GERMANY, 1 45 

the higher civilisation of the races on the river-hank 
— the Ellin e — " they buy wine." Their food, he says, 
is of a simple kind, consisting of wild fruit, curdled 
milk, and fresh game. The barbarians had not arrived 
at the knowledge of well-kept venison, or grouse, or 
blackcock. Doubtless the women derived some con- 
solations for their hard life in millinery. They wore 
indeed " the same dress as the men, except that they 
generally wrap themselves in linen garments which they 
embroider with purple." One female fashion has de- 
scended from the German ladies to a remote posterity. 
It seems that to make a sleeve for cloak or tunic passed 
their skill, so " the upper and lower arm is bare, and 
the nearest part of the bosom is also exposed." Care 
of their children, indeed, did not take up much of their 
time. " In every household, naked and filthy, they 
grew up with those stout frames and limbs which we 
so much admire." Their families were numerous, 
for we are told, with a well-merited reproof of Roman 
fathers and mothers, that " to limit the number of their 
children or to destroy any of their subsequent offspring 
is accounted infamous." Baby-farming was reserved 
for the use of more civilised nations. 

In one respect the Germans set the Greeks and 
Eomans a good example, and perhaps gave a whole- 
some hint to more recent times. They did not go so 
far as to permit their wives and daughters to vote at 
elections, yet in some sense they admitted women's 
rights. " They believe," says Tacitus, " that the sex 
has a certain sanctity and prescience, and they do 
not despise their counsels, or make light of their 
answers. We have seen in the days of Vespasian, 
Velecla, who was Ions regarded by many as a divinity. 



46 TACITUS. 

In former times, too, they venerated Aurania and 
many other women, but not with servile flatteries 
and shameful deifications." This is apparently a 
parting compliment to the Caesars, who, if they did 
not themselves adore, required their subjects to deify 
imperial wives. The respect which Tacitus displays 
for these female diviners was bestowed on their pro- 
phetic gifts alone, and did not extend to their sex 
generally ; for in his brief account of a tribe called 
Sitones he says, "They are ruled by a woman, so low 
have they fallen, not merely from freedom, but even 
from slavery itself." 

In these notes on the domestic condition of the 
Germans, it is hardly possible to mistake the purpose 
of Tacitus. In the hardy lives and warlike activity of 
the Germans he glances at the extravagance and luxury 
of the Roman nobles of his time. In their poverty, a 
consequence of their ignorance and indolence when at 
peace, in their chastity, politic because of their poverty, 
he saw an image, though a rude one, of those ages 
of Rome when consuls drove their own ploughs, or 
" roasted turnips on a Sabine farm." In many a Ger- 
man hovel might be found a counterpart of a Cato or 
a Siccius Dentatus, but not one of a Sejanus or a Tigel- 
linus ; in many a German swamp or forest dwelt a Cor- 
nelia and her young Gracchi, an Agrippina, a chaste and 
fruitful wife, but (neither a Messalina nor a Poppaea. 

The following sketch of a German village has led 
some to suppose it drawn by an eyewitness : — 

" The natives of Germany have no cities ; they do 
not even tolerate closely contiguous dwellings. They 
live scattered and apart, just as a spring, a meadow, or a 
wood has attracted them. Their villages they do not 



THE 'GERMANY.' 47 

arrange in our fashion, with the buildings connected 
and joined together ; but every person surrounds his 
dwelling with an open space, either as a precaution 
against the disasters of fire, or because they do not know 
how to build. No use is made by them of stone or 
tile ; they employ timber for a]l purposes— rude masses, 
without ornament or attractiveness. Some parts of 
their buildings they stain more carefully with a clay 
so clear and bright that it resembles painting, or a 
coloured design. They are wont also to dig out sub- 
terranean caves and pile on them great heaps of dung 
as a shelter from winter, and as a receptacle for the 
year's produce, for by such places they mitigate the 
rigour of the cold." 

The account of the religion of the Germans given by 
Tacitus differs materially from that of Caesar ; but the 
opportunities of the later writer may have been the 
better. Mercury, he says, they honoured most 
among deities ; at certain seasons they deemed ifc 
expedient to propitiate him by the sacrifice of human 
victims. To Hercules and Mars they offered animals, 
and a portion of the Suevic nation practised the worship 
of Isis. 

The fondness of both Greek and Bonian writers for 
identifying their own rites and mythology with those 
of less civilised or imperfectly known countries throws 
much obscurity on the history of religion generally. 
It is scarcely necessary to apprise the English reader 
that Mercury and Hercules, Mars and Isis, were as little 
known to the Germans as the Syrian Astarte or the 
Punic Moloch. Caesar denies the existence of a priest- 
ly caste among the Germans, and Tacitus nowhere 
actually contradicts him ; for the " priest of a state " 



48 TACITUS. 

whom he mentions is more akin to the great " medicine- 
man " of a tribe of American Indians, than to the 
colleges of the Gaulish Druids, or to the sacred corpora- 
tions of India, Syria, Egypt, and Palestine. In public 
matters, he says, the gods are invoked by the state 
priest, in private by the father of the family, and each 
derives the divine answer through the medium of lots, 
or small pieces of wood cut from the bough of a fruit- 
bearing tree. This, however, is only the first step in 
the inquiry. The answer must be confirmed by augury, 
and birds by their song or their flight are the organs 
of the divine will. So far the Roman and German 
soothsayers were much alike, and probably the less 
civilised were the more pious of the two, for we do not 
read of the Teutonic augurs, as we do of the Roman, 
that when they met one another in the street they 
found it hard to look grave. Horses, too — and " this," 
he says, "is peculiar to this people" — were mediums 
for omens and warnings. What follows has a very 
oriental aspect, reminding us of the omen drawn from 
the neighing of King Darius's horse. * " Kept at the 
public expense in these same woods and groves are 
white horses, pure from the taint of earthly labour. 
These are yoked to a car, and accompanied by the 
priest and the king or chief of the tribe, who note 
their neighings and snortings. No species of augury is 
more trusted, not only by the people and the nobility, 
but also by the priests, who regard themselves as the 
ministers of the gods, and the horses as acquainted 
with their will." 

There is a remark by Tacitus, in a graver tone and 

* Herodotus, iii. 84. 



THE 'GERMANY: 49 

in a higher mood, corresponding closely with one he 
makes on the religious belief of the Jews. He appears 
to have been struck by the purity, if not the sublimity, 
of the Teutonic creed. " The Germans," he says, 
" believe that the gods cannot be confined within walls, 
nor, by reason of the vastness of their nature, be re- 
presented under the similitude of any human figure." 
Eut although they built not temples nor carved images, 
they were not without certain places dedicated to na- 
tional worship. Their shrines were sacred spots in 
the depth of forests, and the gloom of the shrine sym- 
bolised a grave and gloomy ritual. To these sacred 
recesses they gave the names of their deities, and 
approached them with awe as the habitation of the 
unseen powers whom they worshipped. Of these 
sanctuaries the roof was the sky, the columns were 
the trees ; and the historian, among other contrasts 
between the Eoman and the Teuton of his time, may 
have had in view the gilded roofs, the marble pillars, 
and the numerous statues he saw in the Pantheon of 
Agrippa or the fane of Jupiter in the CapitoL 

There were kings in many of the German tribes, 
but their power was not unlimited or arbitrary. The 
king was expected to expose his person in battle, 
as well as to command the army. There were two 
houses of Parliament. The chiefs deliberated about 
minor matters, the whole tribe about more important 
ones. The assemblies for debate, except in cases of 
sudden emergency, were held on certain fixed days, 
either at new or full moon. Like assemblies of more 
recent date, the Germans w r asted a good deal of time 
before they applied in earnest to business, A century 
has not elapsed since members of our House of Com- 

a. c. vol. xvii. D 



50 TACITUS. 

mons wore small swords in St Stephen's Chapel ; and 
the Tentonic legislators sat on their benches of turf 
armed. " Silence/' we are told, was proclaimed by 
the priests, who, like "Mr Speaker," did not take part 
in the debate, but had the right of keeping order. 
" The king or the chief, according to age, birth, dis- 
tinction in war or eloquence, is heard more because he 
has influence to persuade than because he has power 
to command." Murmurs indicated the ' Noes,' bran- 
dishing of spears the ' Ayes,' in this primitive Parlia- 
ment. Of their skill in husbandry Tacitus has little 
favourable to say. The vine was yet to be introduced 
into Khineland, fruit-trees were rarely if ever planted, 
and there was a plausible excuse for the omission of 
orchards. In the first place, the German was a migratory 
animal ; in the next, a fighting one. In either case a 
stranger or a foe would very likely have been the better 
for what he had not himself planted or grafted. For 
cereals the soil generally was too stiff, too sandy, or too 
wet : to drain the swamps, to irrigate the sand, demand- 
ed labour and cost, and the German was too indolent, too 
poor, and too restless, to undertake anything beyond 
the rudest agricultural work. He succeeded better as a 
grazier, — he often owned vast herds of cattle ; but here 
again the farmer of the south far surpassed him, for his 
domestic kine were small in size and rough in coat, as 
inferior to the white breed of Umbria, or the herds 
that were pastured in the Abruzzi during the summer, 
and in Apulia during the winter months, as a German 
boat was to a Eoman galley. The horses, like the 
Cossack ponies, were hardy and capable of enduring 
long journeys, but shaggy and low of stature. The 
Batavians alone among the northern nations had 



THE 'GERMANY: 51 

chargers fit for cavalry, and supplied the legions with 
excellent steeds and skilful and bold riders. 

His admiration of the virtues, as he esteemed them, 
did not blind Tacitus to the vices of the Germans. 
Of these the most glaring were drunkenness and 
gambling. Like all races in a state of barbarism, 
the German, so long as food was not at hand, 
endured hunger with stoical patience; but when he 
had it he made up for abstinence by excess. But 
drunkenness was his capital failing. Like the gods 
in Walhalla, these mortals gloried in passing whole 
days and nights at table ; and the hospitable board was 
often stained with the blood of some of the company. 
Still, in their cups there seems to have been some 
discretion ; for, says Tacitus, — 

" It is at their feasts that they generally consult on 
the reconciliation of enemies, on the forming of matri- 
monial alliances, on the choice of chiefs, finally even 
on peace and war ; for they think that at no time is 
the mind more open to simplicity of purpose or more 
warmed to noble aspirations. A race without either 
natural or acquired cunning, they disclose their hidden 
thoughts in the freedom of festivity. Thus, the senti- 
ments of all having been discovered and laid bare, the 
discussion is renewed on the following day ; and from 
each occasion its own peculiar advantage is derived. 
They deliberate when they have no power to dis- 
semble ; they resolve when error is impossible." 

As to their gambling, the Germans appear to have 

surpassed the most civilised of mankind. It was a 

serious occupation even when they were sober; and 

so venturesome were they about gaining or losing, that 

' when every other resource has failed, on the last and 



52 TACITUS. 

final throw they stake the freedom of their own per« 
sons. The loser goes into voluntary slavery. Though 
the younger and stronger, he suffers himself to be 
bound and sold." 

Among the numerous varieties of the human race 
who flocked to Rome, the Germans had many repre- 
sentatives. They usually formed the Caesar's guard, 
as the Scotch archers at first, and the Swiss mousquet- 
aires afterwards, did that of the French kings. The 
cavalry was no longer composed of Roman knights or 
Italians, and the Batavian horse had become an almost 
indispensable adjunct to the legions. A brother of 
the Cheruscan Arminius served in the Roman army, 
and boasted of his services and loyalty to Augustus 
and Tiberius. Civilis, the Batavian chief, had been 
trained in a Roman barrack, and had smarted under a 
centurion's rod. Here, then, was at hand an ample 
supply of men able to enlighten an historian of the 
German people — an advantage, however, of which 
Tacitus, so far at least as ethnology is concerned, seems 
not to have availed himself to any great extent. 

We now turn from this curious, and in part perhaps 
fanciful, account of the German nations. In what 
relation it stands to the other writings of Tacitus can 
never be known. It is the only one of them that Las 
not an introductory preface. It bears some marks of 
not being completed ; and may very possibly have 
been an early draft or an abandoned design of a full 
history of the German wars similar in kind to the one 
already mentioned — Pliny the elder's. 



CHAPTEK IV. 



THE ' ANNALS. 



TIBERIUS. 



The title of this work may not be inviting to some 
English readers. It may suggest to them the idea of 
a note- book in which rough materials are collected for 
a complete and polished narrative. They have doubt- 
less observed in the most attractive historical works 
frequent references to monkish annals — to Camden's 
and Strype's, for instance, the authorities for much 
dreary political or ecclesiastical controversy. But no 
one need anticipate in the ' Annals ' of Tacitus any dul- 
ness. Ear from being the dry bones of some purposed 
record, they are among the most signal examples of 
thoughtful, interesting, and brilliant narration. They 
abound in anecdote ; their by-ways are often not less 
pleasant than the main road ; they take the reader into 
many lands ; introduce him to many forms of life and 
manners. The keystone of the arch is indeed Eome 
and its Caesar, but the arch of description itself is 
wide in its span : the c Annals ' are " the roof and 
crown " of the mighty master's genius. 

The i Annals' commence with the death of Augustus, 
a.d. 14, and, when in a perfect state, closed with the 
death of Nero, in 68. In them were related the events 
of fifty-four years. They are less mutilated than the 



54 TACITUS. 

6 History/ yet they have in some respects suffered far 
more severely, inasmuch as we lose in the later of the 
author's works many more important scenes and events 
than were treated of in the earlier. Of the fifth book 
of the ' Annals ; the greater part has perished; the 
seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth no longer exist, and 
of the eleventh a considerable part is missing. By the 
imperfect condition of the fifth book we are left to 
learn from other and inferior writers, many of whom 
lived long after the time of Tiberius, the real character 
of Sej anus's conspiracy. By the entire absence of four 
books we are without such a narrative as Tacitus alone 
could pen, of the whole of Caligula's reign and of the 
first five years of that of Claudius. By the mutilation 
of the sixteenth, we are deprived of the necessary ma- 
terials for understanding the causes and motives of the 
revolt which hurled from a throne he had so long 
abused the last of the Julian Caesars. 

It is impossible to attempt giving a mere abstract 
of the ' Annals' as they have come down to us. 
Condensation is seldom satisfactory : an epitome can 
hardly fail to be more or less obscure. We must be 
content with dwelling on a few only of the more 
striking scenes or persons delineated by the historian. 
The first six books may be regarded as a portrait of 
Tiberius. He, present or absent from the scenes of 
action, whether they relate to war or peace, is the 
pivot on which the machine of government revolves. 
He was neither, like Claudius, the servant of his own 
freedmen, nor, like Nero, the companion of singers, 
dancers, gladiators, and charioteers. History presents 
few characters so difficult to decipher as that of Tiberius. 
Iv/en Tacilus's summary of his virtues and vices can 



THE * ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 55 

hardly be reconciled with facts or consistency. Most 
unpopular with every class at Rome, and in its imme- 
diate neighbourhood, he was regarded by the provin- 
cials as a wise, a temperate, and even a beneficent 
sovereign. It almost seems as if there had been one 
emperor in the capital and another outside its walls. 

After relating the death of Tiberius, Tacitus says — 
" He ruled the Roman state with absolute sway. His 
manners also varied with the conditions of his fortune. 
His conduct was exemplary and his reputation high 
while in a private capacity, or holding dignities under 
Augustus. While Germanicus and Drusus were yet 
alive, his manners were reserved and mysterious, art- 
fully assuming the merit of virtues to which he had no 
claim. While his mother survived, his character ex- 
hibited a compound of good and evil. While he loved 
or feared Sejanus, though detested for his cruelties, he 
observed a secrecy and caution in the gratification of 
his evil passions ; but at last when all restraints of 
shame and fear were removed, and he was left to the 
uncontrolled bent of his genius, he broke out into acts 
of atrocious villainy and revolting depravity." * 

The historian who penned this very antithetical 
character, opens his fourth book with a high testimony 
to Tiberius during the first nine years of his reign. He 
ruled indeed with absolute sway, and so, virtually, had 
Augustus done before him : it was the " hard condi- 
tion twin-born with their greatness;" but while his pre- 
decessor had the art to veil with roses the chains he 
imposed, it was always the ill-luck of Tiberius to dis- 
play them, and often inopportunely. For a period of 
eight years at least he " intrusted to the senate all the 
* Annals, vL oh. 51. 



56 TACITUS. 

public and all private business of importance : to tbe 
leading members of it he allowed liberty of debate : he 
checked flattery of himself ; in his preferments he was 
guided by merit, by ancient nobility, by renown in 
war, by ability in civil accomplishments, insomuch that 
his appointments to office were universally approved. 
Consuls and praetors retained the usual distinctions of 
their offices; inferior magistrates their proper authority; 
and the laws, except in cases of treason, were benefici- 
ally administered. The tithes, taxes, and public reve- 
nues were managed by companies of Roman knights : 
the Caesar's own affairs were conducted by men of 
eminent probity, some of whom were known to him 
only by their good repute ; and when once engaged by 
him, they were retained without any restriction of term, 
and most of them grew old in the same employment. 
Dearth of provisions at times distressed the people, but 
through no fault of the prince, who spared neither 
pains nor expense to remedy the deficiency of food, 
whether it were owing to storms at sea delaying the 
corn-fleets, or to bad harvests. He took care that the 
provinces should not be oppressed by new taxes, and 
that the already existing burdens should not be ren- 
dered intolerable by the strictness or rapacity of the 
farmers of the revenue. * "My sheep," it was a favour- 
ite maxim of his, " may be shorn, but not flayed by 
you." Corporal punishments and confiscation of goods 
were unknown. Many a noble owned far more landed 
property in Italy than the emperor did : many a rich 
man possessed more freedmen and slaves : and the be- 
haviour of the imperial slaves was modest, which could 
not always be said of the senatorial bondmen. If he 
had any suits with private persons, he referred them 



THE ' ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 57 

as if he had been a simple citizen to the courts and 
the law. 

Tiberius, when the death of Augustus was publicly 
announced — he had not arrived in time from the Dal- 
matian coast to be present at the last moments of the 
dying Caesar — entered at once upon his important 
duties as commander of the army, governor-general of 
the provinces, and tribune of the people ; and thus had 
virtually in his hands all the essentials of imperial 
power. Secure of these, he awaited, until after the 
funeral of Augustus, his nomination as Prince of 
the Senate. And at this point, in the view taken of 
him by Tacitus, began that system of dissimulation 
which he followed through a long reign. It might have 
been more honest to demand, but it was perhaps more 
politic, as well as decent, to court the suffrages of the 
senate. The account of the Osesar's hesitation in accept- 
ing, of the senators' eager servility, in imploring him to 
consent to accept, the only dignity that was not his al- 
ready, is among the historian's masterpieces of descrip- 
tion. Tacitus says that Tiberius never faltered, except in 
the presence of the conscript-fathers. One motive for 
his hesitation was a dread that in his nephew Ger- 
manicus he might find a formidable rival, and there 
was not time to assure himself of the loyalty and 
honorable feelings of that darling of the Eoman people. 
Another but less obvious cause for delay, was his re- 
pugnance to be regarded as the nominee of his mother 
Li via, who not only at the moment had secured her 
son's quiet accession, but also had obtained for him 
from the reluctant Augustus every office comprised in 
the imperium — except that of Prince of the Senate. 
Moreover, there were members on the senatorial 



58 TACITU,. 

benches whom the late emperor had suggested might 
contest with the son of Livia the succession to the 
empire. The suspicions were idle : the senate had 
been too long trained in subservience to have a voice 
of its own : but, although idle, they were not in- 
effectual, as the objects of them found in due time to 
their cost. Perhaps there was yet another motive for 
real or affected hesitation in Tiberius on this occasion. 
He loved to read men's thoughts ; to analyse their 
motives ; to balance in his own scale their words and 
deeds, and to draw his own conclusions as to what was 
merely lip-service, and what was a real desire that he 
should ascend the vacant throne. Their votes and 
voices he could easily have constrained : he preferred 
to draw out the actual sentiments of his courtiers. His 
dissimulation will hardly be accounted unwise, if we 
bear in mind that Tiberius at no one period of his life 
was a favorite of the Roman people. Their love and 
hopes had been lavished on his deceased brother 
Drusus, and now were transferred, in measure heaped 
and running over, to the son of Drusus, the young, 
handsome, brave, and gracious Germanicus. 

More formidable dangers than political » intrigues 
occupied the attention of Tiberius at the very moment 
he commenced his reign. The legions in Pannonia 
broke out into mutiny as soon as they heard of the 
death of Augustus ; and their conduct was the more 
alarming from the fact that six years before there 
had been in the same quarter a revolt of the same 
troops, which Tiberius himself had been sent to 
put down, and which, as it proved, he had " scotched 
but not killed." There was the more reason for 
prompt action, because tho mutineers could in a fort- 



THE 'ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 59 

night reach Italy, and in three weeks the capital itself, 
which was then slenderly supplied with guards, for 
the most effective divisions of the army were stationed 
in Upper or Lower Germany. The mutiny was suffi- 
ciently grave to render it necessary for the emperor 
to despatch his son Drusus, and one of the praetorian 
prefects, iElius Sejanus, with a formidable force of 
cavalry and veteran infantry, to the Pannonian camp. 
A timely eclipse, however, so disheartened the rebels, 
that, after committing many atrocities, they returned 
to their standards under the impression that the gods 
frowned on their revolt. 

But if the Pannonian revolt was a spark, a mutiny of 
the legions in Upper and Lower Germ any threatened 
to be a devouring flame. For there, in both provinces, 
the disaffected soldiers were in the immediate neigh- 
bourhood of the free Germans, proud of their demoli- 
tion of Varus and his army five years before, and ever 
watching for an opportunity to cross to the left bank 
of the Ehine. The most popular general of the day, 
the Csesar Germanicus, was in command of eight 
legions — a force that with auxiliaries consisted of at 
least 60,000 men. Tiberius might affect to dread 
some half-dozen of the nobles, but he was sincere in 
his apprehensions of his adopted son. Him indeed 
he suspected unjustly. The noble and loyal disposi- 
tion of Germanicus was a riddle to the moody and 
timid master of thirty legions, and he probably dis- 
trusted him the more for a straightforward dealing of 
which he was himself incapable. To hear from suc- 
cessive messengers that the legions of the Ehine were 
in revolt ; that they had offered to proclaim their 
commander Caesar ; that they had demanded and 



60 TACITUS. 

received from him a largesse; that not merely Ger* 
manicus, but also his wife, Agrippina, were the 
darlings of the mutineers ; and that even his little 
grandson Caius, the future Caligula, was their pet, — 
might alarm a stouter heart than Tiberius possessed. 
The name of Germanicus alone would have thrown 
open the city gates, and the servile aristocracy would 
have joyfully deposed, and probably put to death, a 
chief whom they disliked, and repeated their oath of 
allegiance to a Caesar, beloved equally by senate, 
soldiers, and people. 

The mutineers expiated their crimes by an ap- 
parently promiscuous slaughter of their leaders. 
But both summer and winter camps were become 
odious to them, and the blood of German foes alone 
could, in their opinion, wash out the stain of their 
rebellion and sanguinary remorse. Germanicus, 
though autumn was already advanced, hurried them 
over the Khine, and indulged them with a brief 
campaign. To trace his steps through two following 
campaigns in Germany, would demand far more space 
than we can afford, and also weary the reader with 
details of events which had no important conse- 
quences, and in which the only character of any 
interest is that of Arminius, the Cheruscan chief. 
The story of this German hero indeed belongs more to 
the annals of Augustus than to those of Tiberius, since 
it was in the earlier reign of the two that he achieved, 
by a combination of craft and valour, the destruction 
of Varus and his legions. Against Germanicus his 
success was far less signal, although by skilfully con- 
trived movements and indomitable energy he baffled 
the invaders, seriously thinned their ranks, and more 



THE 'ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 61 

than once reduced the Eoman general to straits which, 
but for the discipline of the legions, would a second 
time have lost Home a general and an army. In 16 
a.d. Germanicus was recalled from the Ehine. He 
was accorded a magnificent triumph, of which to 
Eoman spectators the most attractive feature was the 
presence of the hero and his five children riding in 
the same chariot. Yet this portion of the spectacle 
excited not merely sentiments of pride and hope, but 
also gloomy anticipations of the future. The people 
called to mind, " that popular favour had proved ca- 
lamitous to his father Drusus ; that his uncle Mar- 
cellus was snatched in his youth from the ardent 
affections of the populace • and that ever short-lived 
and unfortunate were the favorites of the Eoman 
people." The prediction, not uttered with bated 
breath, doubtless reached the ears of Tiberius, and 
bore baneful fruit in later years, when his " fears 
stuck deep " in Agrippina and her sons. 

The presence of Germanicus, now consul, was 
urgently needed in the Eastern provinces, where the 
death of Augustus had given rise to disturbances on 
the Armenian and Parthian frontiers, and where, also, 
the civil government appears to have required the 
presence of a vice-emperor. The removal of the young 
and successful general is ascribed by Tacitus to the 
fear or jealousy ef Tiberius, but there is no reason to 
impute such motives to him. Had Tacitus lived in 
the reign of Tiberius, we should perhaps have been 
told by him, that the Claudian Caesar had seen much 
service in the Ehenish and Danubian districts, and 
knew better than Germanicus how to deal with bar- 
barians. So long as the legions were burning their 



62 TA CITUS. 

villages, devastating their fields, and chasing them 
across morass, forest, and river, the Germans were 
tolerably united in a common cause. Whereas, rid 
of the invader, they were pretty sure to quarrel with 
one another ; and thus, by their civil wars, they served 
Borne far more effectually than she could serve herself 
by the expenditure of blood and treasure. The cam- 
paigns of Germanicus had really no important result. 
The Germans were often defeated, but never conquered; 
and perhaps a Teutonic Tacitus would have told of 
more Roman reverses than the Roman one thought 
meet to chronicle. From the ' Annals ; alone it is clear 
that the invaders suffered severely from the natural 
difficulties of a land void of roads and bridges, and 
studded with swamps and pathless woods. Clear, also, 
it is, that even in pitched battle the Romans' rank and 
file suffered severely, and were cumbered by their own 
armour; while their lightly-clad opponents fought with 
ease and agility, knee-deep in water, or amid the gloom 
of a primeval forest. And however successful at the 
opening, Germanicus was with one exception — his first 
inroad — always unfortunate at the close of his cam- 
paigns. He lost his flotilla : he sacrificed many hun- 
dreds, at the very least, of valuable soldiers in extri- 
cating himself from the sodden and slippery marshes, 
many, also, in cutting his way through forest and am- 
bush, many by sudden and unexpected assaults, and 
many by the false reports of his guides. 

By appointing Germanicus to the viceroyalty of the 
Eastern provinces, the emperor might seem to have 
ceased to fear him, and to have gratified the wishes 
of all ranks in Rome. The choice, indeed, was, to all 
appearance, most happy. Had the tribes been polled, 



THE 'ANNALS'—TIBERIUS. 63 

he was the person whom they would have voted for 
unanimously : had the senate been consulted, there 
would have been no division : had the name of their 
favorite been referred to the army, there would have 
been a universal clashing of shields, and loud and 
ringing huzzas in assent. But Tiberius marred the 
grace of this appointment by accompanying it with 
that of one who was notoriously an enemy of the 
proconsul. Among the proudest of Eoman houses, 
at the time, was that of the Pisones. Calpurnius 
Piso had his full share of the family pride, and saw 
in Germanieus, not the hero of the people, but the 
descendant of the plebeian Drusi. Yet of all the 
magnates of the time, it was this Piso who was chosen 
for the post of 'coadjutor' to the young proconsul. 

The story of the later days of Germanieus is one 
of several enigmas we find in the ' Annals/ He 
insinuates that there was a court-cabal against him 
and his wife — the one was to be narrowly watched 
by Piso, the other by Piso's wife Plancina. In the 
latter suspicion there was, perhaps, the more truth ; 
for Livia, whose influence was still great with Tibe- 
rius, did not conceal her hatred of Agrippina. The 
historian hints that there were ugly stories about the 
cause of Germanicus's death — idle stories, perhaps ; 
yet it could not be denied that whether to gratify his 
own malice, or in obedience to secret instructions 
received by him, Piso thwarted every plan or move- 
ment of his chief, and misinterpreted his words and 
acts. Certainly, if they had such orders, Piso and 
Plancina most punctiliously obeyed them. Go whither 
he might, do whatever he might, privately or officially, 
the conduct of Germanieus, and without question of 



G4 TA CITUS. 

Agrippina as well, was reported of unfavourably to the 
Caesar on the Palatine and his mother. As a token 
of respect for the fountainhead of Western philoso- 
phy and literature, and to display his reverence for 
the birthplace of so many illustrious statesmen and 
philosophers, orators, and poets, Germanicus, during 
a brief visit to Athens, laid aside every outward 
symbol of his high office, and, attended by a single 
lictor, walked in the streets, and visited the temples, 
the schools, the gymnasia, and the theatres of the city 
of Pallas. This, certainly harmless, and probably sin- 
cere, homage to the memory of the mighty dead, 
appeared to the jaundiced eye of Piso an affront to the 
dignity of Eome. " Was it seemly in Caesar's son to be 
civil to such a pack of hybrid vagabonds as then were 
the Athenian people? Was it proper for one who 
represented the majesty of the empire, to curry favour 
with the offscouring of various nations, with fellows 
whose great-grandsires had leagued with Mithridates 
against Sylla, and whose grand sires had fought with 
Antony against Augustus'?" During an interval of 
business, the proconsul sailed up the Nile and con- 
templated the great works of the Pharaohs and the 
Ptolemies. This pilgrimage, when reported to Tiberius, 
gave him much offence. And he severely censured 
Germanicus for entering the capital of Egypt without 
permission from the prince. "For Augustus," he wrote, 
" among other secret rules of power, had appropriated 
Egypt and restrained the senators and dignified Eo- 
man knights from going thither without licence; as 
he apprehended that Italy might be distressed with 
famine by every one who seized that province — the 
key to the empire by sea and land, and defensible by 



THE < ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 65 

a small garrison of men against large armies." In 
neglecting to obtain a passport, Germanicus was in- 
discreet ; yet, surely, by refusing the empire, when 
proffered by his soldiers, he had given a sufficient 
pledge of loyalty. Even a governor-general, accom- 
panied by a few tribunes and centurions, on a journey 
of pleasure, Deed not have reasonably alarmed the lord 
of thirty legions. 

All cause for fear or jealousy was soon at an end. 
Within a few weeks after his return from Egypt the 
hope and pride of the empire was stretched on a sick- 
bed, and passed away from friends and lovers, from 
foes and spies, in the capital of Syria, Antioch. Often 
as one of their beloved princes died unexpectedly, the 
Eoman people, with a credulity not uncommon in 
modern Europe, believed that he had met with foul 
play. The most absurd stories of magical arts and 
poisoning sprang up, and were accepted by the popu- 
lace, and doubtless by many dressed in senatorial at- 
tire. At the trial of Piso for the imputed murder 
of his commander, and contempt of his orders, the 
disobedience of the coadjutor was proved, but the 
charge of poisoning quite broke down, and, if we 
consider the circumstances, very justly. Even for a 
Piso it was not easy to drug the food of a man at his 
own table, in the presence of numerous guests and 
attendants. The illness of which Germanicus died 
appears to have been some species of fever. He 
had been suddenly transplanted from a cold and 
moist to a hot and dry climate — from the banks of the 
Rhine to those of the Orontes. His vexations were 
many ; the acts and demeanour of Piso, and perhaps 
of Plancina also, can hardly have failed to have ex- 
A. c. vol. xvii. E 



66 TACITUS. 

cited suspicions that his coadjutor had some secret 
warrant for his conduct. When a man is laid low by- 
fever, some extra vexation is not unfavorable — to the 
disease. 

If it be not easy to gather from the records we pos- 
sess a satisfactory portrait of Tiberius, it is even more 
difficult to decipher the character of Sejanus. We 
are assured by Tacitus that the loss of Germanicus 
caused Tiberius no regret ; on the contrary, he accounted 
that event among the " blessings of his reign." For- 
tune, he proceeds, now began to change the scene — 
that is, in the ninth year of his principate — and a train 
of disasters followed. The emperor began to throw off 
the mask — either by tyrannising himself, or encourag- 
ing and supporting others in tyrannical proceedings. 

" The origin and cause of this change," he says, " are 
attributable to iElius Sejanus, commander of the Prae- 
torian Guards. He was born at Bolsena [Vulsinii] ; his 
father was Seius Strabo, a Roman knight ; in early 
youth he attached himself to Caius Csesar, grandson of 
the deified Augustus. By various acts he subsequently 
gained such an ascendancy over Tiberius, that though 
he was close and mysterious in his intercourse with 
others, he threw off all restraint and reserve with him. 
His person was hardy and equal to fatigues ; his spirit 
daring ; expert in disguising his own iniquities, prompt 
to spy out the failings of others ; at once fawning and 
imperious" — this is no uncommon combination ; " with 
an exterior of assumed modesty, his heart insatiably 
lusted for supreme domination." " And with this view 
he engaged sometimes in profusion, largesses, and 
luxury ; but more frequently gave himself to business 
and watching, practices no less dangerous, when 



THE 'ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 67 

counterfeited by ambition for the acquisition of 
power." 

That such a person as Sejanus should ever have 
existed, Tacitus ascribes to the wrath of the gods 
against the Eoman state, to which this minister " was 
equally fatal in the height of his power and bis death." 
Had he confined the fatality to Tiberius himself, we 
should have been the more inclined to agree with the 
historian ; he in fact ascribes to the minister the poli- 
tical depravation of the emperor. 

The first important measure of Sejanus was to con 
centrate the praetorians, or imperial body-guard, in one 
camp. Hitherto this division of the army had been 
quartered either in the capital or in neighbouring towns. 
They appear to have been billeted on private house- 
holders or lodged in taverns, and were doubtless, in the 
one case, a nuisance to their hosts, while, in the other, 
they were put in the way of evil companions. Viewed 
at the moment it was effected, and not judged of by its 
results, this collection of the guards into one camp ap- 
pears to have been a prudent measure — one that even 
a wise and honest minister might have devised or sanc- 
tioned. It assured the Government of ready support 
when needed ; it would protect respectable citizens 
from the fury of a Eoman mob, like those which occa- 
sionally disgraced the later years of the commonwealth. 
It was, in fact, a very similar innovation to that in our 
own history, when a standing army took the place of a 
militia • and it was more the fault of the time than of 
the change which rendered the praetorians the tools of 
Caesar, or the arbiters or donors of imperial power. An 
Augustus, who knew how to win the affections as well 
as the respect of his subjects, could dispense with a 



68 TACITUS. 

camp near at hand ; but for a Tiberius, who possessed 
no attractive qualities, and who was, perhaps, as much 
disliked by the citizens as he was feared by the nobles, 
such a bulwark may have been indispensable. 

Plots, or the suspicion of them, thickened very soon 
after the reins of government were placed in the 
hands of Sejanus. The upper classes, who looked 
on the Claudian prince as a supplanter of the Julian 
line, yet more deeply resented the intrusion of one 
whom they regarded as an upstart — the obscure offspring 
of a borough town (municipaUs), having no ancestral 
claims on their respect, and whose family name had 
never been inscribed on the calendar of consuls (Fasti). 
Like the favorite counsellor of Augustus, Sejanus came 
of an old Etruscan house ; but Maecenas had never 
risen above the rank of a knight, and was modest in 
his demeanour and habits of life. On the contrary, the 
man whom Tiberius delighted to honor was notorious 
for his arrogance, and the higher he rose in public rank 
or imperial favor, the more he was fawned upon and 
hated. When Caesar indeed proclaimed the virtues of 
this lucky adventurer, who would dare to call them in 
question? In everything the emperor, now advanced 
in years, weary of public business, and conscious that 
he was detested by a majority of the Roman citizens, 
gave way to Sejanus. The weak bent to the strong 
will — the man who could rise no higher to the man 
who was still climbing up ambition's ladder. So osten- 
tatious was his favor, perhaps, for a while, so sincere 
his friendship, that, in his speeches and letters to the 
senate, Tiberius frequently made honorable men- 
tion of Sejanus. He was his guide, his other self, 
in the government of the empire. Careless of public 



THE < ANNALS'-TIBERWS. 69 

honors himself, shunning rather than courting ap- 
plause from his subjects, Tiberius was gratified when 
such distinctions were conferred on his minister. He 
permitted statues and busts of the Etruscan to be placed 
beside his own in the forum and the law courts, in the 
praetorian barracks and the camps of the legions ; nor 
did he evince any jealousy when the senate decreed 
one altar to Clemency, another altar to Friendship, and 
set up around them portraits of himself and Sejanus. 

The most terrible weapon in the hands of Sejanus 
was that furnished by the public informer (delator es). 
It did not originate with him, but he worked the ma- 
chine with an energy unknown before. He had many 
reasons for rendering the function of informer more effec- 
tive. The Caesar was timid and suspicious, and easily 
persuaded, after a while, that his life or his authority was 
assailed by the persons who counted his days, arraigned 
his policy, or spoke of his private conduct. The nobles 
regarded the minister with envy and contempt — with 
the one for his nearness to the Caesar, with the other 
for his obscure origin. Again, Sejanus could not enter- 
tain a hope of succeeding Tiberius, unless he could iso- 
late him from his own family and his immediate friends. 
" The imperial house full of Caesars/ ' writes Tacitus, 
" the emperor's son in the vigour of manhood, and his 
grandsons grown up, were obstacles to his ambition ; 
and because to cut them off all at once was dangerous, 
the success of his treacherous plot required that the 
horrid deeds should be perpetrated by slow degrees." 
From the army and the populace he expected and 
experienced no opposition. The former, although they 
were Roman soldiers, were rarely Roman by birth, and, 
even if they knew the names of old and noble families, 



70 TACITUS. 

they were ignorant of the deeds, by which the Fabii, 
the Scipios, the Cornelii, or the Gracchi had raised 
themselves to the consulate and the senatorial bench. 
The latter, with the mean spirit of a mob in all times, 
rejoiced in the humiliation of men of rank, and saw 
in every illustrious victim a kind of sacrifice to their 
own envy. A Roman mob was always ready to cry, 
" A bas les aristocrats ! " and a London or Parisian one 
is always ready to do the like. Among the earliest 
and certainly the most conspicuous victims struck down 
by Sejanus, was Drusus, the emperor's only son. But 
the direct heir to the purple was beyond the informer's 
shaft : and the prince-imperial was murdered by the 
aid of his young wife Li via, whom an adulterous con- 
nection had previously brought into the snares of the 
ambitious minister. It w T as against the widow of Ger- 
manicus, her sons, and their adherents, that he first let 
slip his bloodhounds. With Agrippina it was less diffi- 
cult to deal. She was indeed far from friendless among 
the great : she was the darling of the Roman people : 
and the soldiers reverenced in her the relict of their 
deceased and beloved commander. But the great could 
gradually be mown down, by the aid of informers. 
The unarmed populace were helpless ; and the victims 
of information were despatched with a secrecy that 
eluded the notice of the soldiers. Agrippina herself 
afforded opportunities to her foes. With all his ad- 
miration of her, as a sample of the woman of a by- 
gone age, Tacitus does not conceal the infirmities of 
her temper. Her haughty demeanour, her unguarded 
tongue, her bursts of passion, were the source of many 
sorrows to herself, of her ultimate ruin, and of that of 
many of her friends and partisans. The last injunc- 



THE < ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 71 

tions of the dying German icus were addressed to her. 
" Then turning to his wife," writes the annalist, " he 
adjured her by her remembrance of him, by their com- 
mon children, to divest herself of her unbending spirit 
and bow to fortune in the storm of her anger ; and, on 
her return to the city, not to irritate those who were 
more than a match for her, by a competition for the 
mastery. So much was said by him openly, and more 
in secret." The injunction was in vain : year by 
year the number of her supporters diminished : the 
brave and loyal were driven to suicide, or into exile, or 
handed over to the executioner : the timid forsook her 
or became spies on her actions and words; and she 
herself, by occasional indiscretions, nursed the jealousy 
or incurred the anger of Tiberius. Of her three sons 
one only survived her ; and she herself, after under- 
going countless indignities, died, it is said, of starva- 
tion in the island of Ponza (Pontia). 

In his designs against the family of Germanicus, 
Sejanus, if not aided, was not crossed by the aged 
widow of Augustus. To Agrippina and her children 
Livia felt, and did not conceal it, all the hatred of a step- 
mother. The favor which she extended to her eldest 
son Tiberius, seems not to have included his brother 
Drusus — assuredly not Drusus' sons. The despotic 
and dangerous old woman, whom, for her crafty and 
intriguing spirit, Caligula called " a Ulysses in petti- 
coats." — was more likely to cherish the jealousy of the 
Caesar, and applaud the plans of his minister, than to 
shelter from their cruelty Agrippina and her orphaned 
children. 

The function of Public Informer (delator) is one of 
the most perplexing features in Caesarian history. It 



72 TACITUS. 

is hard to imagine life endurable under such a system 
of police. It affected every order of society except the 
lowest, — senators, knights, magistrates, and military 
officers — the busy, the idle — the very young, the very 
old — men conspicuous for their virtues, and sometimes 
also for their honourable poverty, and men notorious 
for their vices, and sometimes for their wealth. A 
harmless country-gentleman was not more secure in his 
park than was the occupier of a stately mansion on 
the Palatine. The informer's bolt was not " the 
arrow which flies in darkness." There was nothing in 
the system like the privacy of the Inquisition, of the 
Yehmgericht, or the Yenetian Council of Ten. The 
emissaries of a Delator did not stick a citation on the 
pillow of his victim, nor drop it into a lion's mouth — 
the government post-office. Whatever was done by 
the Roman informer was done openly. He was not 
ashamed of his calling : it brought him money and 
distinction : and he gloried in the means that raised 
him from obscurity. And yet when no one was secure, 
men revelled as well as lived under this reign of terror, 
drank old Falernian and feasted on Lucrine oysters and 
TJmbrian boars as cheerfully as if they were as sure of 
the morrow as of its sunrise and sunset. 

Political eloquence, at least on any grand scale, ex- 
pired with the commonwealth, for where there are no 
parties in a State there can be but few occasions for 
debate. In the law courts, at the city- praetor's tribunal, 
and when there was an impeachment argued before the 
senate, there was still a field for wordy war ; and if we 
may trust to the reminiscences of the elder Seneca, to 
the reports of Tacitus, to Pliny's Letters, to Quintilian, 
and other writers of the time, many of the Delators 



THE 'AXNALS'— TIBERIUS. 73 

were persons of great ability, and by no means con- 
temptible as public speakers. Some of them were of 
ignoble birth, others were scions of ancient families, 
whom, whether high-born or low-born, ambition, 
poverty, or fashion — for there are endemics in public 
life as well as in certain states of the air — impelled to 
take up the profession of public prosecutor. Knights 
and senators did not blush to make a traffic of their 
eloquence and accomplishments; while a " new man" — 
that is, one who had no " blue blood " in his veins or 
waxen images in his hall — might, in dragging a culprit, 
or quite as likely an innocent person, before the senate, 
complaisantly compare himself to a tribune of the 
people in bygone days. In case of conviction, a por- 
tion of the fine fell regularly to their share, and it was 
often augmented by a special remuneration also. But 
money was not their sole reward. At a later time 
there was coined the proverb that Galen — a good medi- 
cal practice — brought wealth ; and Justinian — briefs at 
the bar — led to honors."' The informer, however, 
besides filling his pocket, reaped an ample harvest of 
political eminence and notoriety akin to fame. Hardly 
any one of this class of them, according to Tacitus or 
Pliny, possessed any private virtues. They were as 
covetous as they were unprincipled ; but their greed 
of gain was limited to getting it, for the most part : 
they squandered their enormous fees, bribes, or gratuities 
as rapidly as they pocketed them. Frequently they 
suffered the misery they had inflicted : a rich informer 
was an irresistible temptation to a brother of the craft; 
or a Caesar whose profusion had drained the treasury, 

* " Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores." 



74 TACITUS. 

made little scruple in banishing or strangling a pros- 
perous Delator, and seizing, for his own use, his goods, 
chattels, and investments. When a Caesar like Ves- 
pasian or Trajan wore the purple robe, it was an evil 
day for informers ; for then, if not handed over to the 
executioner, they were sent to some island prison, and 
it sometimes happened that the ship which carried them 
never reached any port. 

Many more pages than we can afford might be occu- 
pied by an account of the rise and fall of these perni- 
cious allies of despotism. We can only narrate a few 
of their exploits. It was accounted a crime against 
majesty — that is the concrete State — to perform before 
an emperor's effigy, even on a coin or ring, any act 
which would be deemed indecent in the presence of 
the emperor himself, such as to strip a slave for chas- 
tisement, or even to strip one's self for the bath. No 
public charge against an officer of the State or an illus- 
trious citizen came to be thought complete, unless one 
of disrespect towards the Caesar was annexed to it as a 
codicil. Silanus, proconsul of Asia, a friend of the 
deceased Germanicus, a partisan of the widowed Agrip- 
pina, was accused of extortion in his province. But 
no sooner was the impeachment published than a con- 
sular, an sedile, and a praetor brought other irrelevant 
charges against him, — among others, that he had pro- 
faned the divinity of Augustus and disparaged the 
majesty of Tiberius. Two profligate women of high 
birth, Apuleia and Lepida, were impeached for adul- 
tery and generally scandalous lives. But the accuser 
thought to strengthen his case by imputing to the 
former of them expressions of disrespect towards 
Augustus and Tiberius, and even the empress-mother 



THE < ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 75 

Li via Augusta; and to the latter the crime of consulting 
soothsayers about the destinies of the imperial family 
— of course including in her inquiry the important 
question, " How long is his majesty likely to live 1 " 
For a while it was necessary that the defendant should 
be proved guilty of some act or deed. Afterwards 
words spoken or written were admitted in evidence of 
disaffection, and many a scroll was burnt by the hang- 
man in the Forum ; and several authors died suddenly, 
because a volume in which Brutus and Cassius were 
extolled, or an unlucky epigram or pasquinade was 
found, was traced to their pen. 

Impeachment of conspicuous citizens and party- 
leaders was no novelty in Eome : the commonwealth 
had bequeathed it to the empire, and the empire did 
little more than place it on a new platform. Laws on 
the subject of treason to the State (majestas) had ex- 
isted from the days of the kings. Indictments of politi- 
cal or personal opponents were among the privileges 
and the barriers of public freedom, and the brightest 
laurels in the orator's crown were the convictions of a 
Scipio Asiaticus, a Verres, or a Catiline. But when 
the emperor united in his own person the various 
functions, civil and military, of the republic — when 
he was consul, prince of the senate, censor, pro- 
consul-general, commander of the army, and tribune 
of the people — when he could legally as well as logi- 
cally say, Uetat, c'est moi — the law of majestas applied 
to his person alone, since he was the only representa- 
tive of the nobles, the knights, the people, the legions, 
and the subjects of Eome. Consequently he was the tar- 
get at which all satirical arrows were aimed, the object 
of every conspiracy, the aim of every rebel. The 



76 TACITUS. 

Julian law, borrowed by trie first Cresar from Sulla's 
legislation, but considerably modified, was confirmed 
and extended by his successor : but neither the popu- 
lar Julius nor the prudent Augustus availed themselves 
of it, except under extreme provocation. It was not 
so with Tiberius. He was, out of a camp, a timid 
man ; and after he had reigned several years, and his 
age was in the sere and yellow leaf, the consciousness 
of his own unpopularity, and the knowledge of machi- 
nations against him, exaggerated his fears into cruelty. 
The history of the public informers accordingly 
opens with this portion of the ' Annals/ and does not 
close until Domitian fell under the blows of a few 
conspirators whose own lives depended on their 
taking his. 

It is creditable to Tiberius that he at first struggled 
against the informers. He rebuked their officious zeal : 
he would not permit a charge of high treason (ma jest as) 
to be mixed up with one of misgovernment of a province 
or scandal in private life. He met such accusations in 
a spirit worthy of a great monarch : he was, in these 
respects, less timid than our James I., less vindictive 
than either Philip II. of Spain or Louis XIV. In his 
better moods he commended liberty of speech. " In a 
free State," he was wont to say, " both mind and tongue 
should be free. " But he was borne down by the 
current of the time. He was wearied by the servility 
of the senate : he was irritated by his own unpopu- 
larity, by pasquinades, by the rumour, if not by the 
reality, of plots against himself. He became, as he 
grew older, more and more distrustful of all about him, 
and when he discovered that even his own familiar 
friend, the man whom he had taken to his bosom and 



THE 'ANNALS'—TIBERIUS. 77 

treated as almost his partner in the empire, was false, 
mercy and justice alike departed from him, and the 
moody self-exile in Capri " let slip the dogs " of infor- 
mation against all who had followed and flattered, or 
were imagined to have done so. the arch-traitor ^Elius 
Sejanus. 

As regards his fame, no step Tiberius ever took was 
more fatal to it than his retiring to Capri. It was a mys- 
tery which no one of his subjects could fathom ; but 
it was also a mystery that invited the worst interpreta- 
tions. In the days of the commonwealth, a tribune of 
the people had increased his popularity by instructing 
an architect so to build him a house on the Capitoline 
Hill, that all his fellow-citizens might at any moment 
be able to see what he was doing. It was a similar 
seclusion in his Alban villa that rendered Domitian 
more obnoxious than ever to all classes in Rome. "No 
one, " says Tacitus, " could have imagined that a 
Roman would voluntarily abandon his country for a 
period of eleven years." To modern ears the his- 
torian's words sound strangely. Capri was not so far 
from Rome as Edinburgh is from London, yet we 
should think the phrase extravagant, if a man, by going 
to the capital of Scotland, were accused of " abandon- 
ing " Britain. Far other import had the words in 
Roman ears. 

Tiberius was in his sixty- seventh year when, on a 
pretext of dedicating a temple to Jupiter at Capita and 
to Augustus at Nola, he turned his back on Rome for 
ever. He was attended to the beautiful island of 
Capri, where he lived in seclusion for eleven years, by 
a very slender retinue ; — by his minister Sejanus, now 
the ostensible if not the sole governor of the empire ; 



78 TACITUS. 

by one of the most eminent lawyers of the day, 
Cocceius Nerva ; by one other senator, by one knight ; 
by an astrologer or two — Chaldseans, as they were 
then usually called ; and by a few learned Greeks. 
Busy and curious Rome very likely asked what occa- 
sion the Caesar had for the presence of an eminent 
jurist? The Greek companions they could easily ac- 
count for, since Tiberius had always dabbled in lit- 
erature; and the Chaldseans excited no surprise, for, 
ever since his long exile in Eh odes, he had been an 
anxious inquirer into his own future, as well as that of 
men whom he feared or hated. Tiberius had often ex- 
pressed an intention of visiting the provinces : galleys 
had been kept in readiness to convey him to Gaul 01 
to the east : but he never carried out his purpose, and 
his indecision had become a by-word in Borne. His 
lingering in Campania, accordingly, and his seclusion 
in Capri, perplexed the senate and the people with 
wonder and fear. 

For the fear there was good cause. Although he 
withdrew from the publicity of Rome and its tedious 
ceremonies, at all times repugnant to him, Tiberius 
did not retire from the business of the State. Far from 
doing so, the decrees and letters issued by him from 
the island, so far as we are acquainted with them, ap- 
pear to have been among the worst samples of his 
jealousy and hatred of the senate. Tacitus and other 
historians lead us to impute to Sejanus the suggestions 
which excited the Caesar to a long and uniform series 
of cruelties. And now it is plain why he took an ex- 
pert lawyer with him. Tiberius was in matters of 
form a pedant \ and therefore to advise him in criminal 
prosecutions, and to draw up death-warrants or sen- 



THE < ANNALS' -TIBERIUS. 79 

tences of exile with, legal precision, the presence of 
Cocceius Nerva was necessary. He, in fact, was a 
kind of " Secretary of the Hanging and Heading 
Department." 

In the imperfect fifth and in the sixth book of the 
6 Annals' the history of Tiberius is completed. It is 
little more than the chronicle of suspicions and fears, 
and consequently increasing cruelty. An emperor, 
designed by nature for great and salutary ends — some 
of which in the first nine years of his reign he carried 
out — gradually sank into a tyrant, who was at once 
miserable himself, and terrible to at least the higher 
order of his subjects. Xot until after the death of 
Sejanus did be learn the real story of his son's death. 
Apicata, the widow of the fallen minister, drew up a 
written narrative of the poisoning of Drusus, and then, 
rendered desperate by the loss of her children, de- 
stroyed herself. This new revelation of the perfidy 
of Sejanus — the only man whom Tiberius had ever, 
to all appearance, really trusted — brought out all the 
worst qualities in his nature, perhaps maddened him, 
for there was insanity in the Claudiau family, and 
more than one of his ancestors had displayed the 
symptoms of a disturbed, as well as a depraved mind. 
But the mystery which shrouds the character of this 
emperor will probably never be completely solved ; 
and it would far exceed the limits, as well as be 
foreign to the purpose of this volume, to discuss the 
inconsistencies patent in the portrait drawn of him by 
Tacitus. The difficulty of severing truth from false- 
hood, rumour from record, trustworthy statements 
from scandalous memorials of the time, is forcibly 
expressed in the following words of 2s"iebuhr : — 



80 TACITUS. 

" The difficulties which embarrass an historical nar- 
rative of times preceding that of the writer, were for 
those of Tacitus really insurmountable. Tiberius had 
succeeded, after Germanicus had quitted Germany, 
in reducing the world " — we suggest that Eome and 
Italy would be more correct — " to a state of torpid 
stillness, and in overspreading it with the silence of 
the grave. Its history is now confined to himself and 
his unfortunate house, to the destruction of the victims 
of his tyranny and the servitude of the senate. In this 
dreary silence we shudder, and speak in a whisper: 
all is dark and wrapt in mystery, doubtful and per- 
plexing. Was Germanicus poisoned % Was Piso 
guilty % What urged him to his mad violence 1 Did 
the son of Tiberius die by poison, — Agrippina by the 
stroke of an assassin? All this was just as uncertain 
to Tacitus as to us." 

And the doubts which hang over this reign increase 
when we turn from the pages of Tacitus to those of 
other writers, whether contemporaries of Tiberius or 
of a somewhat later period. In them we shall find that 
the admissions in his favor which the historian 
makes, reluctantly fall short of rather than exceed the 
truth. Those who were nearest to the time have 
generally treated the emperor with respect or in- 
dulgence. 

Nor should it be forgotten, while admitting the 
darkness of the narrative, and trying in vain to re- 
concile the inconsistencies it presents, that among the 
materials employed by Tacitus in the composition of the 
1 Annals ' were, by his own confession, the ' Memoirs ' 
of the younger Agrippina, the unworthy daughter of 
Germanicus, the wife of the unfortunate Claudius, and 



THE < ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 81 

the mother of the execrable Nero. The authoress of 
these ' Memoirs ; was not likely to be just, much less 
lenient, to the memory of Tiberius. Her mother, the 
virtuous and high-minded Agrippina — " a matron of 
the ancient stamp " — her two brothers, Drusus and 
Nero, had been sacrificed to the fears and jealousies of 
the Claudian Caesar, who listened to the evil prompt- 
ings of his minister Sejanus, and who was further 
incensed against the family of Drusus by the haughty 
bearing of the widow of Germanicus. The younger 
Agrippina had indeed wrongs to avenge ; but the de- 
struction of her near kindred was not her only motive 
for hostility to the name of Tiberius. Rumour had 
bruited abroad that her father Drusus was in heart a 
republican, and regarded even Augustus as a usurper. 
There was division in Caesar* s household. The loyal 
Germanicus, indeed, seems to have taken no part in 
it ; but his wife, and the Drusi generally, viewed Ti- 
berius as an interloper, and themselves, or at least 
the head of their family, as the only legitimate suc- 
cessors of Augustus. The hatred which the Planta- 
genets felt for the Tudors, the hatred which the 
Jacobites cherished against the house of Hanover, 
will afford us some measure of the feelings of the 
children of Drusus for the son of Livia. We no 
longer accept such writers as Heath and Sandford for 
our authorities in the case of Cromwell, nor trust 
Eeginald Pole in forming our judgment of Henry 
VIII. A similar caution may fairly be exercised in 
the case of Tiberius, as he is exhibited by Tacitus ; 
and, besides Agrippina's ' Memoirs/ Dean Merivale has 
been the first to turn attention to a very probable 
cause for the ill fame of Tiberius. He was, in some 
a. c. vol. xvii. F 



82 TACITUS. 

things, an official pedant. The reports of criminal 
trials, even though they contain serious charges against 
himself, were carefully preserved in the public Eecord 
Office,* " which thus became an official repository for 
every calumny against the emperor which floated on 
the impure surface of common conversation." There 
they probably remained unread until there came a time 
of zealous reaction against the Julian and Claudia n 
Caesars — the time, that is to say, of Trajan. " We 
cannot but suspect," continues the same great authority 
for * Eome nnder the Caesars/ " that this was the 
storehouse to which Tacitus and Suetonius, or the 
obscurer writers from whom they drew, resorted for the 
reputed details of a prince's habits whom it was the 
pleasure and interest of many parties to blacken to the 
ntmost. The foulest stories current against Tiberius 
were probably the very charges advanced against him 
by libellers which he openly contradicted and de- 
nounced at the time, and which would have sunk into 
oblivion with the mass of contemporary slander, but for 
the restless and suicidal jealousy with which he him- 
self registered and labelled them in the archives ol 
indignant justice." * 

" Velleius Paterculus, indeed, and Valerius Maxi- 
mus," writes Dean Merivale, whose delineation ol 
Tiberius is a corrective of that of Tacitus on many 
points — " contemporaries and subjects of that emperor, 
must be regarded as merely courtly panegyrists : but 
the adulation of the one, though it jars on ears accus- 
tomed to the dignified self-respect of the earlier Eomans, 
is not more high-flown in language and sentiment than 

* Chapter 44. 



THE < ANNALS'— TIBERIUS. 83 

what our own writers have addressed to the Georges, 
and even the Charleses and Jameses, of the English, 
monarchy ; while that of the other is chiefly offensive 
from the connection in which it stands with the lessons 
of virtue and patriotism which his book was specially 
designed to illust^te. Tjr^ qH** Q eneca, the master 
of a school of rhetoric, to which art his writings 
are devoted, makes no mention of the emperor under 
whom he wrote ; but his son, better known as the 
statesman and philosopher, speaks of him with consi- 
derable moderation, and ascribes the worst of his deeds 
to Sejanus and the public informers (dtdcdores) rather 
than to his own evil disposition. In the pages of 
Philo and Josephus the government of Tiberius is 
represented as mild and equitable : it is not until ve 
come to Suetonius and Tacitus, in the third genera- 
tion, that they are blazoned in the colours so pain- 
fully familiar to us." * 

* Hist, of the llouians, v. ch. 46. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE c ANNALS.' 
CLAUDIUS — NERO. 

Claudius, the younger brother of Germanicus, was in 
his fiftieth year when, after the murder of Caligula, he 
was unexpectedly raised to the throne. Tacitus cannot 
conceal his amazement that one hitherto so contemptible 
in the eyes of every class in Borne should have been 
reserved for the dignity of emperor. " Some strange 
caprice of fortune," he thinks, " turns all human wis- 
dom to a jest. There was scarcely a man in Kome 
who did not seem, by the voice of fame and the wishes 
of the people, designed for the sovereign power, rather 
than the very person whom Fate cherished in obscurity 
in order to make him, at a future period, master of the 
Roman world." * 

Yet Claudius, in intention, was not among the bad 
Caesars. Had he met with honest friends, and had he 
not been misguided by his freedmen and his wives, 
Messalina and the younger Agrippina, his rule might 
have been happy for his subjects and creditable to him- 
self. During a reign of fourteen years — 41 to 54 a.d. 
— he made many good and useful regulations. He was 

* Annals, iii. ch. 18. 



THE 'ANNALS'- CLAUDIUS. 85 

diligent, nay laborious, in public business — indeed, 
sometimes too much so, since lie would often interfere 
with matters which it would have been wiser to leave 
in the hands of the proper and less distinguished 
officials. By his activity he often incurred blame ; 
and by his awkward manners and want of tact, ridicule 
also. Naturally a good-humoured man, he was fre- 
quently led into cruelty by bad advisers, and these 
advisers were his freedmen or the empresses. 

The reign of Claudius has indeed often, and not im- 
properly, been called "the reign of the Freedmen ;" 
and as their ascendancy pervaded the times both of 
this Caesar and his immediate successor, it may be well 
to give a slight sketch of them here. 

That such a worshipper of times past, so stanch an 
aristocrat as Tacitus, dipped his pen in gall when de- 
lineating this order of men, is not to be wondered at. 
His dislike of these upstarts, as he accounted them, 
was, however, an echo of an old republican sentiment. 
Sulla's freedmen were, nearly as much as his proscrip- 
tions, the cause of the profound hatred with which the 
great Dictator was regarded by all except the highest 
aristocrats of Eome. The freedmen of Pompeius in- 
jured, by their pride and ostentation, the popularity of 
that general favorite of both senate and people. Yet 
without attempting to palliate the vices of a Polybius, 
a Pallas, or a Narcissus, it should be borne in mind 
that in a State which can scarcely be said to have pos- 
sessed a middle class at the period treated of in the 
* Annals' — the balancing influence of the knights as an 
intermediate power between the senate and the people 
was a thing of the past — the employment of freedmen 
in State affairs was almost a necessity of the time. The 



86 TACITUS. 

nobles were too proud, when not too profligate, to be 
willing or wholesome counsellors of Caesar : and even had 
they been better or more capable men than they were, 
he might have feared to draw them too near his person, 
inasmuch as the great families of Eome were never, at 
least under the Julian and Claud ian emperors, Caesar's 
well-wishers. Not until a bourgeois class of senators 
came in with the Flavian dynasty, was it easy to find, 
fit for high office, men of decent parentage or ordinary 
ability. The names of the freed men show that if not 
Greeks by birth, they generally sprang from a Grecian 
stem. Unfortunately for both Caesar and Eome, it 
was easy enough to meet with clever Greeks, but not 
with honest ones. 

So long as he kept on good terms with the soldiers, 
an emperor had little to dread from the ambition of his 
freedmen, at least as regarded his own position. For 
neither a servile senate nor a well-fee'd praetorian 
cohort would have ventured to proclaim the emanci- 
pated son of a slave, Caesar. Claudius gave scarcely 
more offence to the nobles by conferring on Gauls 
the full privileges of Roman citizens, than he 
did by permitting his freedman Polybius to walk 
in a procession between the two consuls. The odium 
incurred by royal favorites in modern times — the 
David Eizzios, the Buckinghams, and others — will 
enable us to form some idea of the feelings of Rome 
tow r ards Pallas and Narcissus. The arrogance of these 
"new men ; ' was on a par with their wealth. An 
anecdote by Tacitus shows their pride and opulence. 
A scion of the noble house of the Scipios did not blush 
to move for a vote of thanks in the senate to the freed- 
man Pallas. " l Public thanks,' said this precious re- 



THE 'ANNALS'— CLAUDIUS. 87 

presentative of the first and second Africanus, i should 
be given to him, for that, being a descendant from the 
kings of Arcadia, he deigned to forget his ancient 
nobility, to accept service under the State, and to be 
numbered among the ministeis of the prince/ Clau- 
dius gravely assured the conscript fathers that Pallas 
was satisfied with the honor, and would still live in 
his former poverty. Thus a decree of the senate was 
engraven on brass, in which an enfranchised slave, 
possessing about two millions four hundred thousand 
pounds, was loaded with commendations for his primi- 
tive parsimony ! " * 

And Claudius had even worse companions than 
Pallas or Narcissus — the women who intrigued with 
them, and traded on the weak nature of an uxorious 
prince. In his early days, when he w r as looked upon 
as only one degree removed from an idiot, he had 
always been confined w r ithin the palace walls ; he 
had lived only with his wives — he had tried 
only to please them ; and besides them, he had had 
no social intercourse, except with slaves and freed- 
men. Of his grandmother Li via, the wife of Augustus, 
he was always in terror. His ungainly figure, his 
thick and stammering utterance, his uncouth ways, 
his absence of mind, made him her abomination. He 
w r as successively the husband of the profligate Messa- 
lina and the imperious Agrippina, and each of them 
made him their tool. Such was the training, these 
were the companions, of the ill-starred brother of 
Germanicus. 

And yet the Caesar, whom thousands of his subjects 

* Annals, xii. ch. 53. 



88 TACITUS. 

fancied to be, what his grandmother had called him, a 
monster (portentum hominis), was the author of a 
measure that was not merely salutary at the time, hut 
also tended materially to the preservation of the 
empire for many generations. In 48 a.d., the iEdui 
(Bourgogne) addressed a petition to Caesar, praying 
him to grant to their chief magistrates admission into 
the senate of Borne, and to such offices as led to 
senatorial rank. The proposal was received with 
some murmurs by a proud oligarchy. But Claudius 
supported it in a speech, still preserved on a brazen 
table discovered three centuries ago at Lyons. The 
example then set was followed • by similar concessions, 
and Claudius preceded Vespasian in calling up to the 
great council of Rome men of probity as well as sub- 
stance, and in pouring neAV blood into the veins of a 
decaying assembly. JSTor should we forget the great 
public works that were executed in this reign, and 
which would have done honor to a better age. The 
Claudian aqueduct was constructed in the grand antique 
style of the Etruscan architects, and supplied Eome 
with water throughout the middle ages. The emissary 
or canal which brought the water of the lake Fucinus 
into the river Liris, a design pronounced impracticable 
by Augustus, was constructed and completed by Clau- 
dius. For these public services he obtained but few 
thanks from his contemporaries ; and the pen of the 
historian delineates his vices and his weaknesses only, 
and makes no mention of the better qualities of this 
unhappy Caesar. There can be no doubt that his 
death was effected by poison administered to him by 
the last and worst of his wives, his own niece, Agrip- 
pina. Claudius she had cajoled or compelled to name 



THE 'ANXALS'—XERO. 89 

for his successor her son INero, and to supersede his 
own son by another wife, Biitannicus. Symptoms of 
repentance for this unnatural act appearing in her 
husband, she called to her aid a noted artist in poison- 
ing named Locusta, and the administration of her drug 
" was intrusted to Halotus, one of the emperor's 
eunuchs, whose office it was to serve up the emperor's 
repasts, and prove the viands by tasting them." 

"In fact/ continues Tacitus, " all the particulars 4i 
this transaction were soon afterwards so thoroughly 
known, that the writers of the times are able to account 
how the poison was poured into a dish of mushrooms 
of which he was particularly fond ; but whether it was 
that his senses were stupefied, or from the wine he had 
drunk, the effect of the poison was not immediately 
perceived. Agrippina was dismayed ; and summoned 
to her assistance Zenophon, a physician, whom she 
had already involved in her nefarious schemes. It is 
believed that he, as if purposing to aid Claudius in 
his efforts to vomit, put down his throat an envenomed 
feather." * Whatever was done was effective ; and 
Claudius, who all his lifetime was scarcely considered 
to be a man, was in a few days pronounced, by a 
decree of the senate, to be a god, and honoured with a 
pompous funeral. 

With some precautions, for she was not sure that 
the Eoman people would quietly submit to the disin- 
heriting of Britannicus, Agrippina presented her son 
at first to the praetorians; and when, by the promise of a 
donation, their assent had been secured, a decree of the 
senate pronounced him emperor. There was no op 

* Annals, xii. cli. 67. 



90 TACITUS. 

position on the part of the provinces, long accustomed 
to accept the choice of the capital. To rule in the name 
of her son was Agrippina's purpose ; to him she left 
the pleasures, for herself she reserved the toils, of gov- 
ernment. Under this arrangement things went on 
smoothly for a few years, and the " Quinquennium 
Neronis " became in after-times a common phrase for 
expressing a happy and well-ordered administration. 

The young Csesar enjoyed many advantages that had 
been denied to his predecessor. Claudius, who had 
a sincere relish for research, was permitted to pursue 
his own studies, and to write books, which have all 
perished, and which probably no one except himself 
ever read. But Nero had been carefully trained in 
his childhood, and there is reason to believe that his 
talents were naturally good, although his taste in 
poetry was, by unanimous consent of his contempo- 
raries, abominable. He was an only, but not a spoilt 
child. His mother provided him with the best tutors 
she could find ; and his studies were superintended by 
the foremost man of the age in literature, the philoso- 
pher Seneca. In one branch of learning he appears to 
have made little progress ; and his incompetence was 
the more marked at the time, because ability to address 
an audience was an almost universal accomplishment 
in young Eomans of rank. " Old men/' says Tacitus, 
" who make it their recreation to compare the present 
and the past, took notice that Nero was the first 
Eoman emperor who required the aid of another's elo- 
quence." It may have been that Agrippina hoj)ed 
the studies her son most delighted in — music and 
poetry — would always divert his attention from affairs 
of State, and leave herself and her favorites free to 



THE 'ANNALS'—NERO. 91 

deal with politics. In the forms and ceremonies of his 
high office, he was doubtless properly instructed ; 
since, had he displayed ignorance of them, the Boman 
wits and scandal-mongers would not have failed to 
note it, and to make Rome merry at the mistakes 
of its Caesar. In his " five good years" Nero indeed 
seems to have taken some part in business, and even 
to have exhibited generous instincts in his care for 
his people. Any dream, however, of an amiable 
character in Nero soon vanished ; and his father's 
prophecy at his birth — that " his and Agrippina's off- 
spring could be nothing but a monster " — was amply 
fulfilled. 

We can afford space for only a very brief summary of 
the events in a reign of fifteen years. Peaceful years 
they were not, like those in general of Claudius. 
There were disturbances in Britain : the Parthians 
were again in the field, though they were humbled in 
the end, and their king Tiridates was compelled to 
acknowledge himself a vassal of the empire. He came 
to Borne : he had a magnificent reception there ; and 
took his diadem from Nero's hand. But Corbulo, a 
faithful and conscientious as well as brave and succes- 
ful general, was ill repaid for his victories. He antici- 
pated by self-destruction the death Nero had prepared 
for him. 

The fire which destroyed two-thirds of the city is 
scarcely less familiar to English readers than the great 
fire of London. The Golden Palace which Nero built 
on the ruins of Pome is also too famous for mention ; 
and the so-called first persecution of the Christians 
adds to the interest of the period. 

Nero's follies seem to have caused more indigna- 



92 TACITUS. 

tion than his vices, and his vices to have been more 
resented than his crimes. The murder of his young 
brother (by adoption) Britannicus ; of his miserable 
wife Octavia ; of his mother Agrippina, — did not seri- 
ously incense a profligate nobility or a venal people, 
although the latter once rose in favour of the wife, but 
were frightened into apathy by brutal soldiers. In 
point of fact, the vices of the Caesars were those of 
the upper classes of Rome generally, but, being ex- 
hibited on a larger stage, were the more observed, 
because, from his high and solitary station, the criminal 
was more conspicuous. 

Once, indeed, in the year 65 a.d., it seemed as if the 
tyrant had at length exhausted the patience of his sub- 
jects, and that a spark still survived of the ancient 
spirit of Rome. The conspiracy of which Piso was 
the head, was formed ; and had the members of it not 
wasted time in long delays, and had its nominal chief 
not been weak and vacillating, there was a fair pros- 
pect of success. The plot comprised some of the 
noblest and some of the most intelligent men of the 
time ; among them the philosopher Seneca, and his 
nephew, the poet Lucan. The consummate art of the 
narration, in this case, adds to the perception of our 
loss in the absence of Tacitus's account of the far more 
complex and more widely ramified conspiracy of 
Sejanus. 

In the combination of Piso and his associates against 
Nero we come for the first time on the appearance of 
philosophers in connection with public affairs ; and as 
Stoics especially were destined to take some prominent 
share in the administration of the empire, or in the im 
perial Council of State, nay, in the person of Marcus Au 



[1HE ( ANNALS'— NERO. 93 

relius to occupy the throne itself, it may he pertinent to 
the subject to show what view Tacitus took of men who 
mingled speculative with active pursuits. Two sects 
of philosophers of any moment prevailed at Rome 
either in the time of Nero or the historian — the Stoic 
and Epicurean. But the latter of these so rarely appear 
in the ' Annals' that they may be passed over. It was 
otherwise with the members of the Stoic school. If 
not really formidable, they were the cause of great 
anxiety to the Caesars. Tacitus informs us of the in- 
terest taken by the capital, and in many of the provinces 
also, as to all that the Stoic Thrasea — with whose last 
words this portion of his works closes — was saying or 
doing. The journals of the day were read in all parts 
of the empire in order to learn what Thrasea ap- 
proved or condemned. It was found that he avoided 
the ceremony of renewing the oath of allegiance to the 
Caesar — in this case Nero — at the beginning of each 
year. Although one of the quindecemviral priesthood, 
he was never known to offer vows to the gods for the 
preservation of the prince. He declined to pray for 
his heavenly voice, as others did ; and as the imperiaj 
voice was husky, it was the more disloyal in him not 
to petition the deities to vouchsafe it clearness. The 
Stoics were much given to suicide, and in their lec- 
tures and writings commended the practice of it. 
And so it was difficult to deal with people who, hold- 
ing their own lives cheap, might be supposed to have 
little respect for the lives of others. 

Tacitus did not hold in much esteem the doctrines 
of the Porch, and doubted the fitness of speculative 
dreamers for statesmen. Had Seneca shown himself a 
good adviser for his imperial pupil 1 ? Had not the 



94 TACITUS. 

pupil compelled the tutor to consent to or justify 
deeds which disgraced them both ? Had he lilted up 
his voice when Britannicus was foully murdered] 
Had he not composed the speech by which the son 
extenuated the still more atrocious murder of his 
mother] Some of these followers of Zeno he knew 
to be arrant knaves — hired witnesses, unscrupulous 
informers, hypocrites who preached virtue and prac- 
tised vice under the shelter of an unkempt beard and a 
ragged gown. Even such as he respected he often 
blames for their want of common-sense. Their pro- 
tests and struggles against Caesarianisni served for 
little else than to make it more oppressive. The 
rumour of a conspiracy increased a Caesar's fears : its 
failure, his cruelty. The tendency of philosophers to 
suicide — and in readiness to poison or stab himself the 
Epicurean was not behind the Stoic — Tacitus thought 
a symptom of impatience or moral cowardice, rather 
than of true manliness or patriotism. When so few 
people were good and so many evil, why should the 
former hang themselves and the latter flourish like 
green bay-trees ] 

Many of the numerous anecdotes with which Taci- 
tus enlivens his ' Annals' are, taken in connection with 
the more important events of the time, key-notes to 
Caesarian history. The following words, addressed 
to Nero by a rough honest soldier, who had been en- 
gaged in Piso's conspiracy, may suffice for one among 
the many examples that might be given. " Asked by 
the emperor, what could induce him to forget the 
solemn obligation of his military oath, Subrius Flavius 
replied, c There was a time when no soldier in your 
army was more devoted than I was to your service, 



THE <AXNALS'—NERO. 95 

and that as long as you deserved the esteem of man- 
kind. I began to hate you when you were guilty of 
parricide : when you murdered your mother, and de- 
stroyed your wife : when you became a charioteer, and 
an incendiary.' " * It is evident from this strange 
juxtaposition of folly with crime that Nero's degrada- 
tion of his high office weighed in public opinion fully 
as much as any of the darker deeds which have ren- 
dered his name infamous for ever. 

The reader's attention is now called to passages in 
the 6 Annals ' which may fairly be denominated Episo- 
dical, and in which their author displays his masterly 
skill as a painter in words. He avails himself of every 
opportunity for such digressions. Weary, apparently, 
of the crimes, the follies, the caprices, and prodigal- 
ity of the Caesars and the capital, he gladly leaves 
Borne and Italy for a while behind him, and welcomes 
a change of scene, even as the traveller in a thirsty 
land welcomes the green spots and the water- springs 
which relieve the tediousness of his way. 

" Whenever Tacitus indulges himself in those beau- 
tiful episodes, in which he relates some domestic trans- 
actions of the Germans or the Parthians, his principal 
object is to relieve the attention of the reader from a 
uniform scene of vice and misery." t So wrote one 
who had deeply studied the works of the historian, 
and who followed the example he commends in many 
of his own most interesting chapters. 

The reign of Tiberius, for example, although it lasted 
for twenty-three years, is far from rich in events, and, 

* Annals, xv. ch. 67. 

t Gibbon — Decline and Fall, ch. viii. 



96 TACITUS. 

without episodical digressions, is little more than a 
narrative of the contest between the emperor, the Jul- 
ian family, and the senate. Tiberius, after Germanicus 
was recalled from the Rhine, succeeded in reducing 
the Roman world to a state of general acquiescence in 
his rule. The provinces, to all appearance, and in- 
deed according to the account given of them by other 
writers, enjoyed the benefits of a general peace ; and 
had every reason to be content with a Caesar who did 
not oppress them by capricious or over - burdensome 
taxation, and who, by allowing both imperial and 
senatorial governors to remain long, and sometimes 
even for life, in office, delivered them from the harpies 
sent out at least triennally by the commonwealth. 
One great offence, in Tacitus' s opinion, committed by 
Tiberius, was his politic neglect of minor disturbances 
abroad. He would not expend the forces of the em- 
pire upon petty wars in Africa or Gaul. He forbore 
to interfere with them in person : he let them either 
die out by exhaustion of the rebels themselves, or left 
them to be extinguished by his ordinary representa- 
tives, praetorian or proconsular. Tacitus, who wrote the 
' History ' and ' Annals' under the warlike Trajan — who 
not only put down revolt with his own hand, but con- 
siderably extended the boundaries of the empire — con- 
demned the policy of Tiberius as either a culpable 
neglect or an inglorious timidity. But in his Dacian 
war, Trajan humbled an enemy who, in a few years 
more, might have imperilled Rome itself; and in his 
eastern campaigns taught the Parthians a lesson which 
they remembered until again invited to active measures 
by the decrepitude and decline of the empire itself. 
Very early in the ' Annals ' we are introduced to the 



THE 'ANNALS'— NERO. 97 

rivals of Home on its eastern frontier. Armenia was 
a constant bone of contention between the Roman and 
the Parthian monarch. It had been so when consuls 
ruled the State \ it was so under Augustus ; and it was 
the ambition and the pride of both the eastern and the 
western emperor to place on the Armenian throne a 
sovereign willing to be guided by them respectively. 
In a.d. 16, and before the Rhenish campaigns of Ger- 
manicus were finished, the oriental kingdoms, and con- 
sequently the Roman provinces adjacent to them, were 
thrown into commotion. The flame of discord was 
lighted up by the Parthians. Weary of civil broils 
and a disputed succession to the throne, that restless 
people had sued for a king at the hands of Rome, and 
not long after accepting, grew tired of him. Yonones, 
whom the Caesar had sent them, was at first received 
with all demonstrations of joy. But his subjects soon 
began to despise him as a prince, whose education at 
Rome had rendered him unfit for an eastern crown. 
In his tastes and pursuits he was essentially a foreigner. 
He took no delight in horsemanship — and to be a fear- 
less rider was, among the Parthians, one of the most 
indispensable of royal virtues. !N"ot being an expert 
and fearless horseman, Yonones naturally disliked the 
sports of the chase — and this was another cause of 
grave offence to his people. "When he made a pro- 
gress in his kingdom, he did not witch the world with 
noble horsemanship, but lolled lazily in a litter, like 
some effeminate western despot. ]Next, the rude fare 
of the Parthians was not to his taste : he introduced 
new-fangled Italian dishes, and thus vexed the souls 
of his caterers and cooks. The Romans were particu- 
lar in sealing up their wine-casks : and Yonones looked 
a., c. vol. xvii. G 



98 TACITUS. 

sharp after his cellar. This conduct was thought 
abominable in a crowned head, and excited the ridi- 
cule and contempt of his butlers and his people. Again, 
since the days of the great Cyrus, it had ever been the 
practice of oriental potentates to show themselves 
sparingly to their subjects, and even to their courtiers 
and ministers to be difficult of access ; whereas Vono- 
nes was affable to all comers, and practised at Seleueia 
the courtesy which he had seen Augustus display at 
Rome. " Virtues," says Tacitus, "new to the Par- 
thians were new vices. Between his good and evil 
qualities no distinction was made : they were foreign 
manners, and for that reason detested." The unlucky 
Yonones was in a very similar position to that of our 
George I. and George II., whose preference for Hano- 
verian ways and dishes, whose undisguised yearning 
for their palace at Herrenliausen and its stiff and punc- 
tilious ceremonies, and whose equally manifest distaste 
for English cookery, rendered them very unpopular 
with the nation that had not very willingly invited 
them to the throne. 

Not, however, until Nero's reign, and shortly after 
his accession, do the Parthian wars occupy a promi- 
nent space in the * Annals.' Cn. Domitius Corbulo 
was a soldier of the ancient stamp — one "fit to stand 
by Caesar and give direction." He had highly distin- 
guished himself under Claudius in a war against a 
German tribe, the Chauci, and by the excellent dis- 
cipline he maintained in his army — not a universal 
merit at the time in Eoman generals, as appears in 
several chapters of the ' History.' In the year 54 a.d., 
the Parthian king, Yologeses, invaded Armenia and ex- 
pelled its king, Rhadamistus, who was under the pro- 



THE • ANNALS 9 — NERO. 99 

tec t ion of tho ."Roman Caesar. The war, with sundry- 
intervals of truce, lasted for nine years, but, in despite 
of much thwarting by Xero or his advisers, Corbulo 
was uniformly successful, and secured and strengthened 
the eastern frontier for several years to come. " Cor- 
bulo," says Tacitus, " was in high favour with the 
princes of the east." He possessed many qualities 
attractive to oriental minds. His stature was manly, 
his personal dignity remarkable : his discourse magnifi- 
cent — that is, having something of Asiatic pomp : his 
movements in the field were rapid : his combinations 
excited the wonder and applause of his opponents — 
even in their eyes he was a hero : "he united," says 
the historian, "with experience and consummate wis- 
dom, those exterior accomplishments, which, though in 
themselves of no real value, give an air of elegance 
even to trifles." 

The well- trained legions which Corbulo command- 
ed in Germany did not accompany him to Armenia. 
There he had to construct an army before he could 
venture on active operations in the field : — 

" He had to struggle with the slothful disposition 
of his legionaries more than with the perfidy of his 
enemies; for the legions brought out of Syria, enervated 
by a long peace, bore with much impatience the duties 
of Eoman soldiers. It fully appeared that in that 
army there were veterans who never mounted guard, 
never stood sentry — men who gazed at a palisade and 
foss as things strange and wonderful — without helmets 
or breastplates — coxcombs, and only looking after 
gain, having served their whole time in different 
towns. Having, therefore, discharged such as were 
unfit from sickness or age, he sought to recruit his 



100 TACITUS. 

forces ; and levies were made through Cappadocia and 
Galatia, and a legion from Germany was added. The 
whole army, too, was kept in tents ; though such was 
the rigour of the winter, that the earth, which was 
covered with ice, would not, without digging, afford a 
place for their tents. Many had their limbs shrivelled 
up by the intense cold ; and some, as they stood 
sentry, were frozen to death. One soldier was par- 
ticularly remarked, whose hands, as he carried a 
bundle of wood, mortified so suddenly that, still 
clasping the burden, they dropped from his mutilated 
arms. The general himself, thinly clad, his head 
bare, when the troops were assembled, when employed 
in their works, was incessantly among them, com- 
mending the stout-hearted, comforting the feeble, and 
exhibiting an example to all. Shrinking from the 
hardship of the climate and the service, many at first 
deserted ; but desertion was in all cases punished with 
death. Nor did Corbulo, as in other armies, treat with 
indulgence a first or second offence. That course 
experience proved to be salutary and preferable to 
mercy, inasmuch as there were fewer desertions from 
that camp than from those in which lenity was em- 
ployed." 

The result of such extreme severity shows not 
merely the ability of the commander, but also the 
sterling worth of the Eoman soldier, who submitted 
to the conversion of a slothful into an active force, and 
while he suffered under it recognised the wisdom of 
such discipline. In reforming troops whom other 
generals had spoiled by indulgence, Corbulo followed 
the wholesome example of the conqueror of Carthage, 
the younger Scipio Africanus, who reorganised at 



THE < ANNALS'— NERO. 101 

Numantia a lax and disorderly army; and that of 
Cains Marius, who, like our Wellington in Portugal, 
prohibited his men from fighting until he was satisfied 
that they were soldiers indeed. 

The pride of the Roman people had rarely been 
more deeply gratified than when the news arrived that 
the Armenian king, Tiridates, had surrendered to 
Corbulo, and had laid down his diadem at the foot of 
Nero's statue, in the camp of his conqueror and in the 
presence of his own nobles. The homage was the 
more signal and complete because Tiridates was a 
brother of the Parthian monarch, and had been placed 
by him on the Armenian throne. A few days before, 
Corbulo and Tiridates had an interview in the tent of 
the latter, and the ceremony then observed was not 
unlike that which now takes place when a governor- 
general of India receives a native prince. The Parthian 
and the Roman general, each attended by twenty 
mounted officers, met on ground now occupied by the 
legions, but recently the scene of a defeat on their 
part. As soon as they drew near to each other, Tiri- 
dates leapt from his horse, and Corbulo returned the 
compliment. They then advanced on foot, and took 
each other by the hand. The pride of the Barbarians 
was flattered by the recollection of their late victory 
on the spot ; while the triumph of Corbulo was ren- 
dered complete by the proposal of the Armenian king 
to accept his crown from the Caesar's hand in Rome 
itself. The conference ended with an embrace. 

" Then," proceeds the historian, " after an interval 
of a few days, the two armies met with much pomp 
and circumstance on both sides : there stood the Par- 
thian horse, ranged in troops with the standards of 



102 TACITUS. 

their several nations : here were posted the battalions 
of the legions, their eagles glittering, their ensigns 
displayed, with the images of their gods, and forming 
a kind of temple. A tribunal placed in the centre 
supported a chair of state, on which the statue of 
Nero rested. Tiridates approached, and having im- 
molated the victims in due form, he lifted the diadem 
from his head and laid it at the foot of the statue. 
Every heart throbbed with intense emotion. ,, 

Tiridates seems to have been more struck by the 
manners of the Eomans than by their military array. 
Perhaps to a monarch accustomed to see myriads of 
horsemen in their bright chain-mail, the compact camp 
and the scanty cavalry of his opponents might appear 
comparatively poor and mean. We are told that — 

" To the splendour of renown — for he was held in 
high esteem by the easterns — Corbulo added the graces 
of courtesy and the pleasures of the banquet : during 
which the king, as often as he observed any usage 
which was new to him, was frequent in his inquiries 
what it might mean — as that a centurion advertised 
the general when the watch was first set, and the com- 
pany at the banquet broke up at the sound of a 
trumpet. Why was the fuel on the augural altar 
kindled by a torch ? All which, Corbulo explaining in 
a strain of exaggeration, inspired Tiridates with ad- 
miration of the ancient institutions of the Eomans." 

Occasionally Tacitus indulges in what we may fairly 
term a romantic story. Ehadamistus, an Iberian 
prince, had usurped the Armenian throne, but was 
expelled from it by the Tiridates just mentioned, and 
compelled to fly for his life. " He escaped with his 
wife, and both owed their lives to the speed of their 



THE < AXXALS'—XERO. 103 

horses. She was far advanced in pregnancy, yet from 
dread of the enemy, and tenderness for her husband, 
she bore up at first as well as she could under the 
fatigue of the flight. Compelled, however, to yield to 
her condition, she implored him to save her by an 
honorable death from the reproach and misery of 
captivity. At first he embraced, he comforted and 
cheered her ; now admiring her heroic spirit, now 
faint with dread that, if left behind, she might fall 
into the hands of another. At last, from excess of 
love, and his own familiarity with deeds of horror, he 
bared his scimitar, and wounding her, drew her to the 
banks of the Araxes, where he committed her to the 
stream. He himself fled with headlong speed till he 
reached Iberia. Zenobia, meanwhile (for such was 
her name), was descried by shepherds floating on the 
water, still breathing, and with manifest signs of life ; 
and as they gathered from the dignity of her aspect 
that she was of no mean rank, they bound up her 
wound and applied their rustic medicines to it ; and 
when they had learnt her name and adventures, they 
conveyed her to Artaxata, whence, at the public 
charge, she was conducted to Tiridates, who received 
her courteously, and treated her with the respect due 
to royalty." * 

This story of Zenobia in no way affects the fortunes 
of the empire. It throws no light on the policy or 
character of the Caesars, but it affords the writer an 
opportunity for displaying the deep interest he took in 
the sorrows and sufferings of humankind. 

He does not disdain to interrupt his narrative when 

* Annals, xii. ch. 51. 



104 TACITUS. 

that "miraculous bird the phoenix, after disappearing 
for a series of ages, revisited Egypt in the year 34 a.d." 
He thinks " the fact worthy of notice, and that it will 
not be unwelcome to the reader." 

" That the phoenix is sacred to the sun, and differs 
from the rest of the feathered species in the form of 
its head, and the tincture of its plumage, are points 
settled by naturalists. Of its longevity the accounts 
are various. The common persuasion is, that it lives 
five hundred years, though by some writers the period 
is extended to fourteen hundred and sixty-one. . . . 
It is the disposition of the phoenix, when its course 
of years is finished, and the approach of death is 
felt, to build a nest in its native clime, and there de- 
posit the principles of life, from which a new progeny 
arises. The first care of the young bird, as soon as 
fledged and able to trust to its wings, is to perform 
the obsequies of its father. But this duty is not un- 
dertaken rashly. He collects a quantity of myrrh, 
and, to try its strength, makes frequent excursions 
with a load on its back. When he has made this ex- 
periment through a long tract of air and gained confi- 
dence in his own vigour, he takes up the body of his 
father, and flies with it to the altar of the sun, where 
he leaves it to be consumed in flames of fragrance. 
Such is the account of this extraordinary bird. It has, 
no doubt, a mixture of fable ; but that the phoenix, 
from time to time, appears in Egypt, seems to be a 
fact sufficiently ascertained." * 

We pass on to the ' History/ Inferior to them in 
some respects, and far more imperfect than the ' Annals/ 

* Annals, vi. eh. 28. 



THE 'ANNALS'— NERO 105 

the earlier- written work rests on better authority than 
the later. The ' History/ indeed, is a narrative akin 
to that of Livy and Roman historians in general; 
whereas the ' Annals ' are conceived in a modern spirit, 
and are the model on which many subsequent writers 
have constructed their works. 



CHAPTEE YL 



HISTORY. 



GALBA — OTHO. 



Whether the year 51 or 54 a.d. be accepted as the 
"birth-year of Tacitus, he was old enough, in either 
case, to have been able to watch and to retain a 
lively recollection of the great convulsion of the 
empire which followed Nero's death. If born in 
the later of these years he was nearly sixteen, if 
in the earlier he was nearly eighteen : and with 
the sixteenth year commenced the manhood of a 
Roman ; and at eighteen we have already seen that 
Pliny had put on a lawyer's gown. The * History ' may 
' accordingly be accounted the work of one having good 
opportunities for observation himself, and for making 
inquiry from others. 

The ' History/ when perfect, extended from the arrival 
of Galba in Rome, on the 1st of January, 69 a.d., to 
the murder of Domitian in 96. If the books which 
are unfortunately lost bore any proportion to those ex- 
tant, then we may fairly put down the number of them 
as thirty at the least. Unfortunately we possess only 
four books and the beginning of the fifth, and these 
comprise, and that not entirely, the events of those 
troubled years 69 and 70. The second chapter is a 



'HISTORY'— GALEA. 107 

prologue to a tragic drama of the deepest dye, and pre- 
pares us for scenes of crime and calamity following one 
another in rapid succession. 

" I am entering," writes Tacitus, " on the history of 
a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by 
civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four 
emperors perished by the sword. There were three 
civil wars : there were more with foreign enemies : 
there were often wars that had both characters at once. 
Now, too, Italy was prostrated by disasters either en- 
tirely novel, or that recurred only after a long succes- 
sion of ages. Cities in Campania's richest plains were 
swallowed up and overwhelmed — Rome wasted by 
conflagrations, its oldest temples consumed, and the 
Capitol itself fired by the hands of citizens. Never, 
surely, did more terrible calamities of the Roman people, 
or evidence more conclusive, prove that the gods take 
no thought for our happiness, but only for our punish- 
ment. " 

In the election of a Caesar the senate might affect 
to confirm the choice of the soldiers ; but it was the 
soldiers, or at least the terror of them, w T ho really in- 
vested with the purple robe Servius Galba. He was 
chosen by the Spanish legions, to whom the example 
had been set by those of Gaul, who had put forward 
as Nero's successor Vindex and Virginius Eufus. The 
one perished in the attempt to become Caesar ; the other, 
with courageous moderation, refused to be placed on 
that proud but perilous eminence. In their selection 
of Galba the soldiers to all appearance did wisely and 
well, for he had passed through many grades of both 
military and civil offices with much credit to himself. 
He reigned long enough and unfortunately enough to 



108 TACITUS. 

merit the description — it has become almost proverbial 
— that had he never been emperor no one would have 
doubted his capacity for empire. 

He came to the throne under almost every possible 
disadvantage. He was old, he was ugly, bald-headed, 
and a gouty invalid. He kept his purse-strings tight : 
he spoke his mind indiscreetly : he was a slave to his 
freedmen and favourites : good in intention, he was 
infirm of purpose : a popular and humane provin- 
cial governor, he caused much blood to be spilt in 
Rome, not because he was cruel, but through weak- 
ness, indecision, or mere perplexity. 

He came to a city peopled by his foes. The prae- 
torians could not stomach a Caesar chosen by the 
legions : they could not conceal from themselves that 
the fatal secret was revealed, and indeed was pervading 
the provinces — that a " prince might be created else- 
where than at Eome." Highly had Nero favored — 
nay, even flattered — his body-guards. They were the 
props of his throne : their tribunes, and even their 
centurions, were admitted to his orgies : they stood 
beside him in the courts of justice : they accompanied 
him on his journeys : he enriched them, when his own 
coffers were empty, with the spoils of noble houses : 
he relaxed their discipline : he catered for their plea- 
sures : they led the applause when he drove his chariot 
in the circus, or sang and spouted in the theatre. 
And now a Caesar was in their darling's place who 
knew not the praetorians — who had filled the capital 
with the ordinary legionaries, whom they had always 
affected to despise as the " Line." The treasury was 
known to be empty : the Caesar was said t > be ava- 
ricious. " He loved no plays ; " he was not musical ; 



'HISTORY'-GALBA. 109 

nothing was to be expected, much to be dreaded from, 
this septuagenarian and worn-out martinet. 

The populace were not less hostile to Galba. Next 
to the praetorians, they were the late emperor's 
warmest supporters. He was ever giving them good 
dinners and shows and spectacles : he did not keep 
himself shut up in the recesses of the palace : his hand 
was heavy on the senators, and the senators they 
hated : but he was the king of the people ; and, being 
so, what mattered it to them if he had put to death 
his adoptive brother Britannicus, or that termagant his 
mother Agrippina, even if she were a daughter of their 
once much-loved Germanicus 1 

Nero's freedmen, again, were among Galba's foes. 
They indeed had been making hay while the sun 
shone ; they had " soaked up the Caesars countenance, 
his rewards, his authorities." Now evil days had 
come : inquiries were being made into the modes by 
which they had become rich — demands were being 
issued for restitution of their gains. Galba needed 
what they had gleaned ; and it was " but squeezing 
them and, sponges, you will be dry again." The in- 
quiries and demands were alike vain, for the sponges 
were already dry ■ they had squandered abroad all that 
they had nefariously gotten. If Galba had any friends, 
they were in his own army, or in the senate. But, by 
an indiscreet though honest declaration that he was 
wont to " choose his soldiers, not to buy them," he had 
also disappointed and estranged his own partisans. 
To rely on the senate was to lean on a broken reed. 
The senatorial chiefs were none of them men of bold 
aspirations or vigorous resolutions. 

Ill luck dogged the heels of Galba even before he 



110 TACITUS. 

readied Italy. The prefect of trie praetorians, Nym- 
phidius Sabinus, who had taken an active part in 
Nero's overthrow, had met his successor at Narbonne 
(Narbo), and, with many compliments, tendered him 
allegiance, accompanied with a modest request to have 
one of the highest offices in the State conferred on 
himself. The ground, however, was preoccupied by 
Galba's adherents, who, not unnaturally, claimed place 
and priority in his favors. The prefect, deeply offended 
by such refusal, hurried back to Rome, and tried to 
persuade the body-guard to proclaim him, Csesar. 
This was too strong a measure even for the dissatisfied 
soldiery, and Nymphidius was slaughtered in the prae- 
torian camp. But Galba, or his counsellors, pushed 
success too far by demanding the sacrifice of all Nym- 
phidius's supporters who had not already destroyed 
themselves, and by putting to death a man of consular 
rank, Petronius Turpilianus, whom Nero had appointed 
to the command of his guards, and who was now con- 
demned without even the formality of a trial. Such 
informal execution of " persons of quality " would have 
touched lightly an army or a populace already familiar 
with irregular sentences and short shrift. But Galba 
increased his evil repute as a man of blood when, on 
arriving at the Milvian Bridge in Rome, he ordered 
his soldiers to mow down Nero's marine battalions — 
they had troubled him with premature importunities 
— and over whose killed and wounded bodies he 
entered the capital. 

Galba was not ambitious of empire. He had refused 
to accept the throne when offered him by the army on 
the death of Caligula ; he had served Claudius faith- 
fully as governor of Africa. The already aged veteran 



'HISTORY'— Q ALBA. Ill 

was prudently living in retirement, when Nero appointed 
him to be his legate in Spain, and for eight years he 
governed that province with great ability. But he 
was in the hands of evil ministers, and resigned himself 
entirely to them, and these ministers were at variance 
with one another : on one point alone did they agree 
— that at Galba's age some provision ought to be 
promptly made for a successor. But their harmony 
extended only to the general principle that Galba 
could not live much longer, and that there was already 
a formidable rival in the field. 

We not unfrequently meet with persons in history 
whose characters it is scarcely possible to draw cor- 
rectly — persons who disappoint cur hopes, and exceed 
our expectations of them. Of this class of men was 
Marcus Salvius Otho. Among the most profligate of 
Nero's companions, the Eoch ester of his court, he 
governed the province of Lusitania for several years 
with much credit to himself: the most luxurious and 
depraved of men while prosperous, his end was that 
of a hardy though unfortunate soldier. Nothing in 
his life became him like the leaving it — he died by 
his own hand, an Epicurean Cato : even as Rochester, 
if Bishop Burnet may be trusted, departed a good 
Christian. It is, however, to Galba's credit that he 
declined following the interested advice of his min- 
isters in the appointment of a successor. " He was 
actuated," Tacitus thinks, " by concern for the State, 
and saw that the sovereign power was wrested out of 
Nero's hands in vain, if it were to be transferred 
to Otho — a duplicate of him. In the choice of a 
colleague Galba appears for once to have judged for 
himself; and his selection, though it proved unfor- 



112 TACITUS. 

tunate, cannot justly be found fault with. Piso 
Licinianus came of an illustrious family on both sides. 
By the better sort in Eume he was respected, if not 
beloved \ but his aspect and deportment savoured too 
much of the strictness of a primitive age. By the 
profligate and the frivolous he was called morose and 
sullen. This appointment necessarily crushed the 
hopes and aroused the wrath of Otho, who now began 
to intrigue in earnest against Galba. 

All this time a storm was brewing in the north far 
more dangerous to the emperor, and far more disas- 
trous to Rome and Italy, than Otho's plot. The very 
day on which Galba put on the consular robe — 
January 1, 69 a.d. — the legions of Upper Germany, 
when summoned to take the military oath to that 
emperor, tore down his images, demanded that the 
oath should run in the name of the senate and 
people, and that some other successor to Nero should 
be appointed. Aulus Vitellius had recently been sent 
by Galba as consular legate to Lower Germany, and on 
the very next day after this mutiny broke out, he was 
greeted in the camp at Cologne by the legions of Ger- 
many, or their delegates, as Imperator. 

The news of this movement in Germany hurried on 
the adoption. It was conferred with dignity by Galba, 
it was received with becoming modesty and reverence 
by Piso, and with plausible and perhaps sincere 
expressions of his desire to fulfil the important 
duties imposed on him. Galba conducted him to the 
praetorian camp, but as he did not promise a donative, 
his speech to the soldiers aggravated his former un- 
popularity. The way was now prepared for Otho. 
To the disappointed guards a notorious prodigal was 



'HISTORY'— GALEA. 113 

far more welcome than a frugal emperor. On the 
morning of the 15th of January, Galba was present 
at a sacrifice, and Otho in attendance on him. The 
entrails of the victims betokened risk to the emperor 
— "in his own household there lurked a foe." That 
foe, it had been prearranged, was summoned by a 
freedman to keep an appointment with a surveyor of 
works. With this excuse he quitted the emperor's 
presence and hurried to the place of tryst already 
agreed on — the Golden Milestone beneath the Capitol 
in front of the Eoman Forum. It may have been by 
chance, it may have been by design, to prevent pre- 
mature alarm in the city, that only three-and-twenty 
common soldiers there saluted Otho as u emperor." 
Certainly he had expected more, since, dismayed at 
the thin attendance, he seems for a moment to have 
wavered in his purpose. But his partisans, better 
informed, drew their swords, thrust him into a litter, 
and bore him off to the praetorian camp. 

Arrived at the camp, the commander on that day — 
one Julius Martialis, a tribune — it is uncertain whether 
he were an accomplice, or merely alarmed at so un- 
looked-for a visit — opened the gates, and admitted the 
pretender into the enclosure. There the other tribunes 
and centurions, regarding their own safety alone, and 
perhaps sharing in the delusion of Martialis — that this 
feeble body of traitors to Galba was but an advanced 
guard of numerous and powerful conspirators — for- 
got at once their duty and their military oath, and 
joined in, or at least connived at, an enterprise of 
whose aim they were still uncertain, and of the exist- 
ence of which they had been ignorant a few minutes 
before. In fact, the privates alone seem to have been in 

a. c. voL xvii. H 



114 TACITUS. 

the secret ; but, as Lad often happened, and was often 
to happen again, they were too powerful for their 
officers. The condensed phrase of the historian alone 
conveys the pith and marrow of the plot. "Two 
common soldiers " (mdnipulares) " engaged to transfer 
the empire of the Roman people — and they did 
transfer it." 

Otho meanwhile had bought the imperial guards. 
He attended at Galba's supper-table, gave handsome 
presents to the cohort on duty, and consoled the dis- 
appointed among the soldiers with gifts of land or 
money. The unconscious emperor, busy with his sacri- 
fice, was really importuning the gods of an empire that 
was now another's. Piso harangued the troops : but 
the appeal of a stoical Caesar was addressed to deaf 
ears : the greater number of his hearers at once dis- 
persed ; the few who remained faithful to the two 
Caesars were feeble or wavering ; the populace and the 
slaves clamoured with discordant shouts for Otho's 
death and the destruction of the conspirators. But 
what could a few domestic servants, a few frightened 
knights and senators, and an unarmed rabble, do 
against the praetorians, now advancing on the city? 
It was to little purpose that Galba's friends stood by 
him when he himself was undecided, when his minis- 
ters were wrangling with each other, and when every 
moment brought the conspirators nearer. The murder 
of Galba can only be described in the words of Tacitus 
— at least in those of his ablest English translators.* 

" Galba was hurried to and fro with every movement 
of the surging crowd ; " the feeble old man, attended 

* Church and Brodribb. 



'HISTORY'- OTHO. 115 

by only one half-armed cohort, had come down from the 
Palatine hill to the Forum ; " the halls and temples all 
around were thronged with spectators of this mournful 
sight. Not a voice was heard from the better class 
of people or even from the rabble. Everywhere were 
terror-stricken countenances, and ears turned to catch 
every sound. It was a scene neither of agitation nor 
of repose, but there reigned the silence of profound 
alarm and profound indignation, Otho, however, was 
told that they were arming the mob. He ordered his 
men to hurry on at full speed and to anticipate the 
danger. Then did Eoman soldiers rush forward like 
men who had to drive a Yologeses or Pacorus from 
the ancestral throne of the Arsacidas, not as though 
they were hastening to murder their aged and defence- 
less emperor. In all the terror of their arms, and at 
the full speed of their horses, they burst into the 
Foruni, thrusting aside the crowd and trampling on 
the senate. Neither the sight of the Capitol, nor the 
sanctity of the overhanging temples, could deter them 
from committing a crime which any one succeeding 
to power must avenge." 

" When this armed array was seen to approach, the 
standard-bearer of the cohort that escorted Galba tore 
off and dashed upon the ground Galba's effigy. At 
this signal the feeling of all the troops declared itself 
plainly for Otho. The Forum was deserted by the 
flying populace. Weapons were pointed against all 
who hesitated. Near the lake of Curtius, Galba was 
thrown out of his litter and fell to the ground, through 
the alarm of his bearers. His last words have been 
variously reported, according as men hated or admired 
him. Some have said that he asked in a tone of en- 



116 TACITUS. 

treaty what wrong he had done, and begged a few days 
for the payment of the donative. The more general 
account is, that he voluntarily offered his neck to the 
murderers, and hade them haste and strike, if it seemed 
to he for the good of the commonwealth. To those 
who slew him it mattered not what he said. About 
the actual murderer nothing is clearly known. The 
soldiers foully mutilated his arms and legs, for his 
breast was protected, and in their savage ferocity in- 
flicted many wounds even on the headless trunk." 

It will not be necessary to dwell long on the re- 
mainder of Otho's story, since he did little memorable 
during his short reign until the last moments of his 
life. " Uneasy lay the head that wore the crown." The 
last rites to Galba were scarcely paid ; the acclamations 
that greeted Otho both in the senate and the camp 
were still ringing in all ears, when he found that he 
had reason to tremble. " From the moment," says 
Dean Merivale, " that he stepped through an emperor's 
blood into the palace of the Caesars, Otho was made 
aware that he in his turn must fight if he would retain 
his newly acquired honours." In swift succession, mes- 
sengers followed one another, bringing him tidings of 
the progress of sedition in Gaul, and of the formidable 
attitude assumed by Vitellius at the head of the armies 
on the Rhine. 

And who was this third candidate for the purple ? 
Had it been worth while to murder Galba in order that 
Otho might succeed ? Would it be worth the expense 
of more blood and treasure to despatch Otho, and re- 
place him by a rival of whom no good report had ever 
reached the capital ? Dear as Nero by his vices and 
cruelties had cost the senate and the people, and one 



'HISTORY'— OTHO. 117 

or two of the provinces, yet at present the empire ap- 
peared to have lost rather than gained by his removal. 
It was bad for a score or two of statesmen and generals 
to perish yearly by the executioner's hands, or by suicide 
— that common refuge of despair ; but it was worse for 
thousands to be mown down by the swords of infuriated 
soldiers, in a few weeks or even a few days. Aulus Vitel- 
lius, indeed, was not utterly evil. He was not wholly 
abandoned to the vices and pleasures of the city. He 
had gained for himself some reputation in letters and 
in eloquence ; he had served with great credit for up- 
rightness as proconsul and legate in Africa. On his 
march from the Rhine he displayed some generosity in 
saving unpopular officers from the fury of the legions, 
among them Virginius Rufus ; and some modesty in 
at first deferring to accept the title of Augustus, and 
positively refusing that of Cresar. His mother and 
his wife also helped to invest him with some vicarious 
merit. Both these matrons were examples of modera- 
tion in prosperity. Sextilia, like Cromwell's mother, 
looked with fear and distrust on her son's elevation, 
refused all public honours herself, and replied to the 
first letter he addressed to her under his new title of 
Germanicus, that her son was named Yitellius, and 
she knew of no other. This high-minded woman died 
shortly after his accession, seems to have been spared 
the spectacle of his gross and vulgar excesses, and 
certainly did not witness his shameful end. His 
wife Galeria bore herself as the spouse of a simple 
senator, and humanely protected the children of 
Flavius Sabinus, Vespasian's brother, from the dag- 
gers of the Vitellians. Like Galba, too, Yitellius 
committed no crime in aspiring to the throne ; it was 



118 TACITUS. 

forced upon hirn by the tribunes and centurions at 
Cologne. 

It is pleasant to encounter virtuous women in the 
annals of a period soiled by the names of a Poppaea, a 
Messalina, and an Agrippina ; we have therefore given 
a passing notice of the wife and mother of Yitel- 
lius. Of himself there is nothing more to be said on 
the score of virtue. " Tacitus," says Gibbon, " fairly 
calls him a hog," and in truth he was a most valiant 
trencherman. As soon as, perhaps even before, his 
arrangements were completed for despatching his 
legions from the Ehine to the Tiber, lie appears to 
have thought that the highest privilege he had attained 
by his sudden promotion was that of keeping the most 
expensive table ever known in Eoman annals. Eut 
Vitellius allowed not a day to pass unsignalised by 
the pomp and circumstance of his dinner. During his 
whole progress from Cologne to Italy — it was neces- 
sarily a slow one, since he needed many hours for 
refreshment and digestion — the lands through which 
he passed were ransacked, the rivers and the seas 
were swept, for delicacies for his table. "The 
leading men of the various States were ruined by 
having to furnish his entertainments, and the States 
themselves reduced to beggary." Such a commander 
could neither be respected nor enforce discipline. 
The Gauls suffered severely, but not so much as 
Italy, from the presence of the Yitellians. The 
evils of war are terrible, but not so terrible, says 
the historian, as was the march of the German legions. 
" The soldiers, dispersed through the municipal towns 
and colonies, were robbing and plundering and pollut- 
ing every place with violence and lust. Everything, 



'HISTORY'-OTHO. 119 

lawful or unlawful, they were ready to seize or to sell, 
sparing nothing, sacred or profane. Some persons 
under the soldiers' garb murdered their private ene- 
mies. The soldiers themselves, who knew the country 
well, marked out rich estates and wealthy owners for 
plunder, or for death in case of resistance ; their 
commanders were in their power, and dared not check 
them." 

Otho did not answer the expectations of his par- 
tisans in Eome. He was no longer the Otho of the 
.Neronian time. He deferred his pleasures to a more 
convenient season : he moulded his new life to accord 
with the duties and dignity of his new position. 
Yet he got little credit by the change, for men not 
unnaturally thought that his virtues were a mask for 
the moment, and that, if he returned victorious, his 
vices would revive. Perhaps they w r ere wrong in 
their apprehensions. Xo indolence or riot disgraced 
Otho's march. " He wore a cuirass of iron, and was 
to be seen in front of the standards, on foot, rough and 
negligent in dress, and utterly unlike what common 
report had pictured him." In a few preliminary skir- 
mishes the fortunes of the Othonian and Vitellian 
armies w r ere pretty evenly balanced. But the em- 
peror had hurried into the field with very insufficient 
forces ; he seems, indeed, from the first to have de- 
spaired of the issue. His excesses in early life had 
enfeebled, not his courage, but his power of will. He 
had indecently exulted when the head of Piso was 
shown to him, but the spectre of Galba is said to 
have haunted him in the solitude of the night after 
the murder. Within twenty hours after his usurpa- 
tion, he began to presage his own falL In one thing 



120 TACITUS. 

he did not share the vices of Nero ; he thirsted not 
for blood, for those whom he put to death were vic- 
tims to the wrath of the praetorians or of the populace. 

And so, indifferent to life and desponding of success, 
Oth o went forth to do battle for his throne without 
awaiting the legions which had declared for him 
in Pannonia, Dalmatia, and Msesia. The prsetorian 
guards were the kernel of his forces, but they were 
more than overmatched by the Vitellian legions 
trained in the German wars. The guards were indeed 
corrupted by the luxuries of Rome, and regard] ess of 
discipline. Like many French regiments in 1870, 
they elected their own officers, and obeyed or dis- 
obeyed them as they pleased. Spies, too, from the 
camp of the Vitellians, had found their way into Rome, 
and whispered to many who resented Galba's murder, 
that if his destroyer were slain or deposed, there would 
be another donative from his conqueror. 

The battle which decided Otho's fate was fought at 
Bedriacum, a small town or hamlet situated between 
Verona and Cremona. At first fortune seemed to smile 
on the Othonians ; a successful charge on their part 
broke the enemy's line, and one of his eagles was taken 
by them. But this, so far from discouraging, infuriated 
the Vitellians, and determined victory in their favour. 
Ceecina and Valens, their commanders, proved them- 
selves valiant and able officers, whereas Otho's generals 
early quitted the field. The slaughter was dreadful. " In 
civil wars," says Tacitus, " no prisoners are reserved for 
sale." The Vitellians were not merely better led and 
disciplined, but their reserves were large, and any 
chance of retrieving defeat by a second combat was 
made vain by the insubordination of the vanquished, 



'HISTORY'— OTEO. 121 

who laid all the blame of discomfiture on their com- 
manders, and threatened them with death. 

Otho was not present in the action. His soldiers 
demanded, his two best officers advised, him to remain 
with the legions, or to defer a battle. They urged 
that fortune, the gods, and the genius (the guardian 
angel of pagan belief) of Otho must be crowned by vic- 
tory. " The day" on which their counsel was accepted 
" first gave the death-blow to the Othonian cause." 

Otho, now at Brocello (Brixellum), a few miles 
distant from Bedriacum, was awaiting without fear or 
drooping spirit — for his mind, in case of reverse, had 
long been made up — the report of the battle. Vague 
and discordant rumours at first reached his ear. But 
at last increasing troops of fugitives brought sure 
intelligence that all was lost. The soldiers who had 
accompanied him, without waiting to hear his opinion, 
exhorted him not to despair, but to try again " the for- 
tune of the die." They themselves were ready to 
brave every danger ; there were forces still in reserve : 
the Marsian and Pannonian legions would join them 
in a few days. Flattery, they said, had done its worst 
in urging him to leave the army, in hurrying on the 
unfortunate engagement. But it was not the voice of 
flatterers that now implored him to take heart, and to 
lead them against the enemy. The soldiers who were 
near him fell at his feet and clasped his knees : those 
at a distance stretched forth their hands in token of 
assent. Plotius Firmus, who commanded a' detachment 
of the body-guard, joined his prayers to those of the 
legions. " The noble mind," he said, " battles with 
adversity : it is the craven spirit that capitulates at 
once. Your soldiers, Csesar, have undergone much, 



122 TACITUS. 

yet do not despond : abandon not an army devoted 
to your cause ; renounce not men as generous as they 
are brave." 

They spoke to deaf ears. Otho had weighed all 
circumstances : the end was at hand : ambition in him 
was dead : he had been dazzled by the purple and its 
gold trappings : they had brought him only anxious days 
and sleepless nights : he had revelled with Nero : he 
had enjoyed some repose in his Lusitanian province : 
he had helped Galba to a throne ; he had hurled him 
from it. He had shed blood enough already, he had 
tasted the extremes of luxury and " fierce civil strife," 
and all was vanity. He addressed to his faithful 
guards some words of gratitude, but he left none of 
his hearers in doubt as to his fixed purpose to have 
done with wars and with life — presently and for ever. 

From the soldiers he turned to his weeping friends. 
Calm and untroubled himself, with a serene counte- 
nance, with a firm voice, he besought them to be calm 
and resigned. He advised all to quit the town with- 
out loss of time, and to make their terms with the con- 
queror. For all who were willing to depart he provided 
boats and carriages. From his papers and letters he 
selected all such as might, under a new Csesar, be in- 
jurious to the writers of them — all that expressed duty 
towards himself or ill-will to Vitellius — and committed 
them to the flames. " For the general good," he said, 
" I am a willing victim. For myself, I have won ample 
renown, and I leave to my family an illustrious 
name." Towards the close of day he called for cold 
water, and having quenched his thirst, ordered two 
daggers to be brought him. He tried the points of 
both, and laid one of them under his pillow. Once 



'HISTORY'-OTHO. 123 

more assuring himself that all who wished had left the 
town, he passed the night in quiet. At the dawn of 
day, he stabbed himself through the heart. One 
wound sufficed, but his dying groans caught the ears 
of his freed men and slaves. They rushed into his 
chamber, and among them Plotius Firmus. In 
compliance with his earnest request, his body was 
burnt without delay. The ghastly spectacle of 
Galba's and Piso's heads fixed on lances and ex- 
hibited to a brutal soldiery and populace was doubt- 
less present to his mind when ordering this speedy 
passage to the funeral pyre. His corpse was borne 
to it by the praetorians " with praises and tears, cov- 
ering his wound and his hands with kisses." Some 
killed themselves near the pyre — " not moved," says 
Tacitus, " by remorse or by fear, but by the desire to 
emulate his glory, and by love of their prince." " Over 
his ashes was built a tomb, unpretending, and therefore 
likely to stand." He ended his life in the thirty- 
seventh year of his age, and had reigned just three 
months. Earely, if ever, does history present an ex- 
ample of swifter retribution for treachery and treason. 
The Yitellian generals moved in three divisions. 
Yalens advanced through Gaul, and so by the Mont 
Genevre into Italy ; Ciecina through the eastern can- 
tons of Switzerland, and over the Great St Bernard ; 
while Yitellius followed more leisurely in the rear of 
his legates. Every district through which they respec- 
tively passed was ravaged ; villages, and sometimes 
large towns, were sacked or burnt; but the richer 
land south of the Alps was the principal sufferer. 
The soldiers of Otho, it was said, had exhausted 
Italy, but it w r as desolated by the Vitellians. The 



124 TACITUS. 

fierce warriors of the north, Komans only in name, fell 
without remorse on the borough-towns and colonies, 
and, as it were, rehearsed on their inarch the licence 
they hoped to indulge in at Borne. From Pavia 
Vitellius proceeded to Cremona, and thence diverged 
from his route to cross the plain of Bedriacum, in order 
to behold the scene of the recent victory. The aspect 
of the field of battle, and the brutality of the victor, 
are thus described by Tacitus : — 

" It was a hideous and a horrible sight. Not forty 
days had passed since the battle, and there lay mangled 
corpses, severed limbs, the putrefying forms of men 
and horses. The soil was saturated with gore ; and, 
what with levelled trees and crops, horrible was the 
desolation. Not less revolting was that portion of the 
road which the people of Cremona had strown with 
laurel-leaves and roses, and on which they had raised 
altars, and sacrificed victims, as if to greet some bar- 
barous despot — festivities in which they delighted for 
the moment, but which were afterwards to work their 
ruin. Yalens and Caecina were present, and pointed 
out the various localities of the field of battle, showing 
how from one point the columns of the legions had 
rushed to the attack • how from another the cavalry 
had charged ; how from a third the auxiliary troops 
had turned the flank of the enemy. The tribunes and 
prefects extolled their individual achievements, and 
mixed together fictions, facts, and exaggerations. The 
common soldiers also turned aside from the line of 
march with joyful shouts, recognised the various 
scenes of conflict, and gazed with wonder on the piles 
of weapons and the heaps of slain. Some indeed there 
were whom all this moved to thoughts of the muta- 



'HISTORY'— OTHO. 125 

bility of fortune, to pity and to tears. Vitelline did not 
turn away his eyes — did not shudder to behold the 
unburied corpses of so many thousands of his country- 
men ; nay, in his exultation, in his ignorance of the 
doom which was so close upon himself, he actually 
■ instituted a religic \.i ceremony in. honour of the tute- 
lary gods of the place." 

It was said that Vitellius expressed a brutal pleasure 
at the spectacle. He called for bowls of wine — he cir- 
culated them freely among his suite and soldiers — he 
declared that " the corpse of an enemy smells always 
well, particularly that of a fellow-citizen." We will 
now leave him in Rome, where he was of course greeted 
by the shouts of the populace, the flattery of the upper 
classes, and innumerable applications for places and 
favours. Well had Tiberius said of his Eoman sub- 
jects, that they were " born to be slaves." 



CHAPTER VII. 



VITELLIUS. 



The legions in Syria and Egypt had taken the oath to 
Galba and Otho without a murmur, hut when required 
for the third time within a few weeks to transfer 
their allegiance to an enemy of both those Csesars, 
they hesitated for a while and then obeyed with an ill 
grace. Between the armies of the northern and 
eastern provinces there had long been jealousies and 
rivalry, and the choice of Vitellius by the German, 
excited angry feelings in the Syrian camps. They 
were not less numerous, they were better disciplined 
and disposed, they had been very recently winning 
new laurels in the north of Palestine ; why should 
they not put forward their claim to appoint a Ca3sar 
as well as the lazy and over-paid praetorians, or the 
mutinous legions of the Rhine *? In one very important 
respect, indeed, they were better situated than either 
the body-guards or the Rhenish divisions. Neither 
Otho nor Vitellius could be termed a happy choice, 
unless to be a notorious profligate or an unsurpassed 
glutton were a recommendation for empire. They, at 
least at Antioch and in Galilee, had two leaders of 



' HISTORY'— V1TELLI US. 127 

mark and likelihood, who had already proved their 
fitness to rule by their obedience and ability in lower 
stations. 

The characters of these very capable leaders are thus 
drawn in a few strokes by Tacitus : — 

" Syria and its four legions were under the com- 
mand of Licinius Mucianus, a man whose good and 
bad fortune was equally famous. In his youth, he 
had cultivated with many intrigues the friendship of 
the great. His resources soon failed, and his position 
became precarious, and as he also suspected that Clau- 
dius had taken some offence, he withdrew into a 
retired part of Asia [Minor], and was as like an exile 
as he was afterwards like an emperor. He was a 
compound of dissipation and energy, of arrogance and 
courtesy, of good and bad qualities. His self-indul- 
gence was excessive when he had leisure, yet when- 
ever he had served he had shown great qualities. In 
his public capacity he might bo praised : his private 
life was in bad repute. Yet over subjects, friends, and 
colleagues, he exercised the influence of many fascina- 
tions. He was a man who would find it easier to 
transfer the imperial power to another than to hold it 
for himself. He was eminent for his magnificence, 
for his wealth, and for a greatness that transcended in 
all respects the condition of a subject. Beadier of 
speech than Vespasian, he thoroughly understood the 
arrangement and direction of civil business." * 

" Yespasian was an energetic soldier : he could 
march at the head of his army, choose the place for 
his camp, and bring by night and day his skill, or, if 

* Hist., i. 10 ; ii. 5. 



128 TACITUS. 

the occasion required, his personal courage, to oppose 
the foe. His food was such as chance offered : his 
dress and appearance hardly distinguished him from 
the common soldier ; in short, but for his avarice, he 
was equal to the generals of old." 

The Caesar " for whom fortune was now preparing, 
in a distant part of the world, the origin and rise of a 
new dynasty/' had no illustrious images in the hall 
of his fathers. His family belonged to the Sabine 
burgh of Reate, and had never risen to public honours, 
but he himself had seen much service. Nero's freed- 
man and favourite, Narcissus, appointed him to the 
command of a legion in Britain, where he highly dis- 
tinguished himself and earned triumphal ornaments. 
He was one of the consuls in the year 51 a.d. But 
those whom Narcissus promoted became the subject of 
the younger Agrippina's aversion, and not until after 
her fall did Yespasian obtain any further employment. 
In 52 he was proconsul of Africa, and, strange to tell, 
he left the province poorer than he came to it — a fact 
scarcely reconcilable with Tacitus's imputation of 
" avarice." He was not only an unready speaker, but 
also an indifferent courtier, and got into disgrace with 
Nero for going to sleep while the Csesar was singing 
and playing before a delighted — or perchance a dis- 
gusted — audience of Corinthians, Olympians, or the 
fastidious men of Athens. Such behaviour was too 
much for Nero's patience, and the tasteless Yespasian 
was ordered to begone and take his impertinent naps 
in his own house. But when serious disturbances 
arose in Judaea, he was too good an officer to be over- 
looked, and was appointed to the government of Pales- 
tine, and to the command of the forces there, or to be 



* HISTORY' -VI TELLI US. 129 

sent thither, at the close of G6 a.d. At the time of 
this promotion he was in his sixty-first year. 

Vespasian was proclaimed emperor by Tiberius 
Alexander, the prefect of Egypt, and it may be inferred 
without his own knowledge or consent at the moment. 
Long he pondered on the proposal even while sur- 
rounded by his own officers and men. It was, in fact, 
a very serious matter to be hailed "Imperator." Within 
a few months three Cassars had perished — Nero by 
the hand of a slave, Galba by the swords of the prae- 
torians, and Otho by his own dagger. The supplica- 
tions of the army, and the urgency of Mucianus — they 
had been on bad terms, but were now reconciled — 
overcame his scruples, and he confirmed the choice of 
the prefect of Egypt by accepting the purple from the 
Syrian legionaries. An intensely practical man when 
not at a concert or a play, he instantly took measures 
for establishing his claim, but he did not hurry to 
Italy, although the eyes of all its better men had 
long been turned to Palestine. The forces of the east 
were divided into three portions. Of these, one was 
deemed sufficient to encounter the Vitellians ; a second, 
was retained in the east, to continue, under Titus, the 
Judaean war ; to watch the Armenian and Parthian 
border was the task of the third. The revolt against 
Vitellius was making rapid strides : some provinces 
remained neutral ; others, Britain and the Rhenish, 
could not afford to part with a cohort, and the em- 
peror at Eome squandered in vulgar and brutal sen- 
suality the money he needed for the payment of his 
troops. 

The march of the Yespasians did not materially 
differ from that of the Vitellians. Again Italy north 

a. c. vol. xvii. i 



130 TACITUS. 

of the Po was ravaged, and once more on the field of 
Bedriacum an empire was lost and won. But among 
the leaders of the eastern army was one who by his 
energy and enterprise relieves trie uniformity of the 
narrative. In Antonius Primus we find a Paladin ; 
a Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, the hero 
of the Succession War in Spain. At the head of three 
legions he seized the passes of the Julian Alps. Far 
inferior to the enemy in strength, his officers advised 
him to await the arrival of Mucianus. But delay 
suited not the eager spirit of Antonius, who, more- 
over, was resolved to win the victory alone. Twice he 
restored the fortune of the day at Bedriacum ; and after 
a brave defence by the Yitellians, he broke through 
their camp before the walls of Cremona, and received 
the keys of that proverbially unfortunate city. From 
that moment the fate of Yitellius himself was decided. 

The city had surrendered under a promise of protec- 
tion, but Antonius did not, perhaps could not, keep his 
word. As yet he had not rewarded his soldiers with 
booty or licence. Tt is said that when taking a bath 
after the fatigues of the assault, he had complained of 
the water not being warm enough. " It soon shall be 
hotter," said an attendant ; and his words were caught 
up by the soldiers as if they were a signal for burning 
the town. In a few hours one of the most beautiful 
of Cisalpine cities was reduced to ashes. 

Yitellius, content with sending to the seat of war 
Ca3cina and Fabius Yalens, abandoned himself to his 
wonted coarse indulgences ; he neither attended to his 
soldiers nor showed himself to the people. " Buried 
in the shades of his gardens, among the woods of 
La Eiccia [Aricia], like those sluggish animals which, 



'HISTORY'— VI TELLIUS. 131 

if you supply them with food, lie motionless and 
torpid, he had dismissed with the same forgetfulness 
the past, the present, and the future. " For cruelties, 
indeed, he found leisure occasionally. He was 
startled by tidings of revolt and disaffection. The 
fleet at Eavenna had gone over to the enemy. Caecina 
had made an attempt, an abortive one, to pass over to 
Yespasian. " In that dull soul joy was more power- 
ful than apprehension." As soon as he learned that 
his own soldiers had put Caecina in irons, he returned 
exulting to Borne. Before a crowded assembly of the 
people he applauded the obedience of the legions, and 
sent to prison the prefect of the praetorian guard, who, 
as a friend of Caecina, might, he thought, follow his 
example. 

Antonius had crossed the Apennines. In the valley 
of the Nar the two armies once more confronted one 
another ; but deserted by their emperor, and without 
leaders, the Vitellians had no spirit for fighting. They 
were incorporated with the Yespasians. The slothful 
emperor, says Tacitus, " would have forgotten that he 
was, or rather had been one, had not his foes reminded 
him of his rank." Antonius offered him terms, which 
were confirmed by Mucianus. His life should be spared; 
a quiet retreat in Campania, the garden and the vine- 
yard of Home, with a large income, was proposed to 
and accepted by him. 

But Borne had yet to drink the cup of woe to the 
dregs. Once more, as in the civil wars of the common- 
wealth, the city was to be sacked and the temple of 
the Capitoline Jupiter to be burnt. Terms were being 
drawn up for a peaceful surrender of the capital and 
the abdication of the emperor. Flavius Sabinus, the 



132 TACITUS. 

elder brother of Vespasian, had remained during all 
these revolutions in Rome, and now represented him. 
In the temple of Apollo, on the Palatine, " the transfer 
of the empire was debated and settled." 

But it was not accomplished so easily. Rome was 
filled with fugitives from the seat of war, and well 
aware that no mercy for them could be looked for if 
Antonius were once master of the city, they dinned in 
the ears of their sluggish chief, that for him the post of 
danger was a private station. Was Antonius a man to 
keep his word 1 Would legions who had shown them- 
selves false, be true to promises or covenants ? How 
long would he enjoy his Campanian retreat, or his 
ample revenues'? He was compelled to return to his 
palace, not indeed to resume his functions, but to aAvait 
his doom. For the last time he entered the Palatine 
house, hardly knowing whether he were still emperor 
or not. 

The transfer which the soldiers refused to ratify 
was, however, considered valid by the senate, the 
knights, the magistrates and police of the city, and 
they urged Sabinus to arm against the German co- 
horts, to vindicate his brother's claim to the purple, 
and to defend Rome, the citizens, and himself from 
the fury of these ruffians. Sabinus complied ; but his 
force was small ; his measures were hurried and insuf- 
ficient ; he was attacked and routed by the Vitellians, 
and compelled to take refuge in the Capitol. Some 
communications took place between Sabinus and 
Vitellius, but they w^ere idle, for the reply of the 
nominal emperor was merely an apology for the con- 
duct of his supporters. He indeed "had not now 
the power either to command or to forbid. He 



'HISTORY'-VITELLIUS. 133 

was no longer emperor ; he was merely the cause of 
war." 

The following description has the appearance of 
being written by an eyewitness of the respective 
scenes : — 

The envoy of Sabinus " had hardly returned to the 
Capitol, when the infuriated soldiery arrived, without 
any leader, every man acting on his own impulse. They 
hurried at quick march past the Forum and the temples 
which hang over it, and advanced their line up the 
opposite hill as far as the outer gates of the Capitol. 
There were formerly certain colonnades on the right 
side of the slope as one went up ; the defenders, issu- 
ing forth on the roof of these buildings, showered tiles 
and stones on the Yitellians. The' assailants were not 
armed with anything but swords, and it seemed too 
tedious to send for machines and missiles. They threw 
lighted brands at a projecting colonnade, and following 
the track of the fire would have burst through the half- 
burnt gates of the Capitol, had not Sabinus, tearing 
down on all sides the statues, the glories of former 
generations, formed them into a barricade across the 
opening. They then assailed the opposite approaches 
to the Capitol, near the grove of the Asylum, and 
where the Tarpeian rock is mounted by a hundred steps. 
Both these attacks were unexpected : the closer and 
fiercer of the two threatened the Asylum. The assail- 
ants could not be checked as they mounted the con- 
tinuous line of buildings, which, as was natural in a 
time of profound peace, had grown up to such a height 
as to be on a level with the soil of the Capitol. A 
doubt arises at this point, whether it was the assailants 
who threw lighted brands on to the roofs, or whether, 



134 TACITUS. 

as the more general account has it, the besieged thought 
thus to repel the assailants, who were now making 
vigorous progress. From them the fire passed to the 
colonnades adjoining the temples : the eagles support- 
ing the pediment, which were of old timber, caught 
the flames. And so the Capitol, with its gates shut, 
neither defended by friends nor spoiled by a foe, was 
burnt to the ground." 

The historian proceeds to relate the final victory of 
the Yitellians. The besiegers " burst in, carrying 
everywhere the firebrand and the sword." Some of 
the Vespasian leaders were cut down at once : the 
younger of the Flavian princes, Domitian, unluckily 
for his own fame and the empire, escaped in the dis- 
guise of an acolyte of the temple, while Sabinus 
and the consul Quinctius Atticus were loaded with 
chains and brought before Yitellius. He received 
his captives "with anything but anger in his words 
and looks, amidst the murmurs of those who de- 
manded the privilege of slaying them and their pay for 
the work they had done." He was preparing to inter- 
cede : he was compelled to yield ; he was now a mere 
cipher ; and the body of Sabinus, pierced and muti- 
lated, and with the head severed from it, was dragged 
to the Gemonise. 

In a few days the Flavian legions were at the 
gates of Eome. Numerous engagements took place 
before the walls, and amid the beautiful gardens in the 
suburbs, generally ending in favour of the Flavians. 
The Yitellians were defeated at every point. But they 
rallied again within the city. 

" The populace," says Tacitus, " stood by and watch- 
ed the combatants," as the people of Paris did when 



HISTORY'— V1TELLI US. 135 

the Allies were, in 1814, fighting with the French for 
the possession of Montmartre ; " and as though it had 
been a mimic combat" — of gladiators in the arena, 
or of the Red and Blue factions of charioteers in the 
Flaminian Circus — "encouraged first one party and 
then the other by their shouts and plaudits. When- 
ever either side gave way, they cried out that those 
who concealed themselves in the shops, or took refuge 
in any private house, should be dragged out and butch- 
ered, and they secured the larger share of the booty; 
for, while the soldiers were busy with bloodshed and 
massacre, the spoils fell to the crowd. It was a ter- 
rible and hideous sight that presented itself throughout 
the city. Here battle and death were raging : there the 
bath and the tavern were crowded. In one spot were 
pools of blood and heaps of corpses, and close by prosti- 
tutes and men of character as infamous. There were all 
the debaucheries of luxurious peace, all the horrors of 
a city most cruelly sacked, till one was ready to believe 
the country to be mad at once with rage and lust." 

Amid this scene of carnage, it is some satisfaction to 
know that condign punishment fell on the German 
soldiers. They were driven to their last stronghold. 
The praetorian camp to which they had fled was des- 
perately defended as well as strenuously assailed. The 
Flavians, expecting that Rome itself would stand a 
siege, had brought with them their artillery : with 
their catapults they cleared the battlements : they 
raised mounds or towers to the level of the ramparts : 
they applied fire to the gates. The gates were bat- 
tered down ; the walls were breached ; quarter was 
denied ; and, according to one account, fifty thousand 
men were slain. 



136 TACITUS. 

Vitellius made a vain attempt to escape. His wife 
Galeria had a house on the Aventine, and thither he 
was conveyed in a litter, purposing to fly in the night- 
time to his brother's camp at Terracina. But, infirm 
of purpose, he returned to the palace, whence even the 
meanest slaves had fled, or where those who remained 
in it shunned his presence. He wandered through its 
long corridors and halls, shrinking from every sound : 
"he tried the closed doors, he shuddered in the empty 
chambers/' he trembled at the echo of his own foot- 
falls. In the morning he was discovered; " his hands 
were bound behind his back ; he was led along with 
tattered robes; many reviled, no one pitied him." He 
was cut down by a German soldier, who may have 
owed him a grudge, or have wished to release him 
from insult. The soldiers pricked him on with their 
weapons when his pace slackened, or stopped him to 
witness his own statues hurled from their pedestals 
and broken by their fall. He was compelled to gaze 
on the spot where a few months before Galba had 
fallen. A sword placed beneath his chin kept his head 
erect, exposing to a brutal mob his haggard looks; his 
visage was besmeared with mud and filth ; and, 
wounded as he already was, he was smitten on the 
cheek as he passed through the long files of his per- 
secutors. When he reached the Gemonias, where the 
corpse of Flavius Sabinus had so recently lain, he 
fell under a shower of blows ; " and the mob," says 
Tacitus (and he might probably have added senators 
and knights also), " reviled him when dead with the 
same heartlessness with which they had nattered 
him living. One speech, it was his last, showed a 
spirit not utterly degraded. To a tribune who in- 



'HISTORY'— VITELLIUS. 137 

suited him he answered, — 'Yet I was once your 
emperor.' " 

We must not pass over, though w-e can merely refer 
to, an episode in the ' History' of Tacitus, that in which 
he treats of the revolt of the Germans. The destruc- 
tion of three emperors, the disturbances in Judaea, the 
devastation of Italy, had severely strained the sinews 
of the empire. But its imminent danger at this period 
lay not south of the Alps, but on the borders of the 
Rhine and the Danube. The main interest of this 
episode consists not in sieges and battles, in the fidelity 
or faithlessness of States or individuals, in the lawless 
conduct of the armies, or the feeble and fluctuating 
measures of their generals. These were features 
common to every district visited by the civil, or more 
properly the imperial, wars of 69 and 70 a.d. The 
revolt of Germany was an insurrection against Roman 
rule itself, not against any one of the four competitors 
for the purple. It was a widely spread, for a while an 
ably organised movement, and at more than one period 
it had the appearance of a successful one. It reveals 
to us how deeply that rule had been affected by the 
extravagance and cruelty of such Csesars as Caligula or 
Nero : to what extent by their indulgence they had 
demoralised the armies and degraded the majesty of 
the empire. Yet it also show^s how strong and effec- 
tive w T as its organisation : how unable to cope with it 
were the most valiant and disciplined of the rebels. 
Had the coalition of Germans and Gauls been sound 
and sincere, had the authors and leaders of it added to 
their enthusiasm the steady and sagacious temper of 
the warriors and statesmen who had made Rome the 
mistress of the world, it is difficult to see how the 



138 TACITUS. 

empire could have survived, bleeding and faint as it 
was at the time from a fierce civil conflict of about 
eighteen months. The purpose of the confederates 
was to throw off then and for ever the yoke of Rome, 
— to effect on a far grander scale what the Italians had 
attempted more than a century and half before, when 
they set up a new capital, Italica, and threatened to 
destroy the den of the Eoman wolves. It was a 
hostile empire that the Germans aimed at, — a far 
more formidable one than the Parthian had ever been, 
or than the great Mithridates had ever imagined. 
Independent Germany would not supply the legions 
with recruits : independent Gaul would not pay into 
the Eoman treasury bars of silver, or sesterces. Both 
Gauls and Germans were well acquainted with Eoman 
tactics ; many thousands of both nations were enrolled 
in the legions or served as auxiliaries, and so were the 
better able to encounter them in the field. 

On the other hand, the eastern provinces were ill 
fitted to recruit the armies of Eome, now in some mea- 
sure thinned and exhausted by the civil war. By 
Italy itself, at least south of the Po, a very few cohorts 
only could be furnished. The brave and hardy Sam- 
nites and Marsians no longer existed in any number. 
They had been swept off in the Social and earlier Civil 
wars. Much of their land had become sheep-walks ; 
and the place of hardy shepherds, ploughmen, and vine- 
dressers was filled up by slaves. The once populous 
Latium was divided among a few landholders, and 
towns like Gabii or Ulubrae now stood in huge parks, 
and when not quite deserted, were inhabited by a few 
peasants or tavern-keepers. The large farms, said 
Pliny the Naturalist, have been the ruin of Italy, 



'HISTORY'— V IT ELLT US. 139 

All these circumstances rendered the German revolt 
most grave and menacing. That it appeared so to 
Tacitus, is plain from several passages in his works. 
Could the Germans only be induced to destroy one 
another, Rome might sleep in comparative security, 
and thank her presiding deities for the feuds of her 
enemy. In his ' Germany '* he writes thus of a happy 
accident of the kind : " The Chamavi and Angrivarii 
utterly exterminated the Bructeri, with the common 
help of the neighbouring tribes, either from hatred 
of their tyranny, or from the attractions of plunder, 
or from heaven's favourable regard to us. It did 
not even grudge us the spectacle of the conflict. 
I pray that there may long last among the nations, if 
not a love for us, at least a hatred for each other ; for, 
while the destinies of empire hurry us on, fortune can 
bestow no greater boon than discord among our foes." 

In Antonius Primus we have at least the semblance 
of an adventurous and able leader of a division. He 
is a sort of Achilles or Joachim Murat ; but in 
Claudius Civilis we have an able general and states- 
man combined. Tacitus evidently bestowed great pains 
on his portraiture. Civilis was of a noble Batavian 
family, and had served twenty-five years in the Roman 
armies. He must have been forty at least when he 
formed the project of revolt, since for a quarter of a 
century he had fought wherever the imperial eagles 
flew, or been stationed wherever there was a Boman 
camp. For some offence he had incurred the displea- 
sure of a Csesar or his legate. " It is," he says, "a noble 
reward that I have received for my toils : my brother 

* Chap. 3a 



140 TACITUS. 

murdered, myself imprisoned, my death demanded by 
the savage clamour of a legion ; and for which wrongs 
I by the law of nations now demand vengeance.' , 

Civilis perceiving, or surmising, that since Nero's 
death Eome was in no condition to war successfully 
with a distant ally, devoted himself thenceforth to 
what he justly considered a noble cause. The Ba- 
tavian Wallace was no barbarian. Like the Cheruscan 
German hero Arminius, he had received a Eoman 
education, and he had learned more than schoolmas- 
ters, lecturers, or books could teach him. He had 
seen the capital in perhaps its most low and degraded 
state ; he had witnessed the public excesses and pro- 
digality of Nero ; he had perhaps heard, whispered 
with bated breath, of the orgies of the palace. The 
hour, it seemed to him, had come when he might de 
liver the Batavian island, if not Germany itself, from 
the tyranny and the vices of Rome. 

As to the Germans of the Rhine, they had little 
dread from the garrisons or camps of the Caesar. 
Vitellius had withdrawn from many if not all of them 
their best troops when he despatched seven legions 
across the Alps ; and in fact there was just then no 
Caesar. Galba had been murdered, Otho had destroyed 
himself, and Vitellius was daily exhibiting his unfit- 
ness for empire. Vespasian, whose character he knew, 
might give cause for some alarm to Civilis. They had 
once been companions in arms, and even friends ; for 
the Flavian competitor for the throne was at one time, 
like Civilis himself, an obscure adventurer, and his 
chance of victory was still doubtful. The very at- 
tempt, however, of the Flavian was favorable to the 
designs of the Batavian, since he could and for a while 



'H1ST0R Y '—VITELLIUS. 141 

did, pretend that lie was recruiting and drilling soldiers 
for his former comrade ; and he had even instructions 
from Antonius Primus to hinder any more German 
levies from being sent southward. Here, then, was an 
excellent mask for the first movements of the con- 
spiracy of Gaul and Teuton against Eome. 

By his eloquence, his skill in political combination, 
and by his knowledge of the character and condition at 
the time of the leading men of Eome and the empire, 
Civilis was enabled to effect a general confederation of 
all the Netherland tribes, both Celtic and German. 
He availed himself of the popular religion or super- 
stition. The name of Veleda has already been men- 
tioned. " She was regarded," says Tacitus, " by many 
as a divinity." The dwelling of this Deborah of the 
Bructeri was a lofty tower in the neighbourhood of 
the river Lippe (Luppia). Many were those who con- 
sulted, but none were permitted to see her. Mystery, 
she justly held — and her opinion has been held by 
many prophetic persons both before and since Veleda 
delivered oracles — "inspired the greater respect." The 
questions of her suppliants and the answers to them 
were conveyed by a relative of the prophetess. The 
first successes of the revolt greatly increased her repu- 
tation, for she had foretold victory to the Germans. • 
With her Civilis was in constant communication — 
doubtless supplied her with the latest news from Gaul, 
Italy, and the Rhine ; and thus her predictions, being 
not without foundation in facts, gained for the Batavian 
leader some allies, and induced many tribes of Ger- 
many to send him subsidies or supplies for his army. 

The advantages possessed by the Batavians are 
thus set forth by their commander. Collecting his 



142 TACITUS. 

countrymen in one of the sacred groves, he thus 
harangued them : " There is now no alliance, as once 
there was [with Rome]. We are treated as slaves. 
We are handed over to prefects and centurions, and 
when they are glutted with our spoils and our hlood, 
then they are changed, and new receptacles for plunder, 
new terms for spoliation, are discovered. Now the 
conscription is at hand, tearing, we may say, for ever 
children from parents, and brothers from brothers. 
Never has the power of Rome been more depressed. 
In the winter quarters of the legions there is nothing 
but property to plunder and a few old men. Only 
dare to look up, and cease to tremble at the empty 
names of legions. For we have a vast force of horse 
and foot ; we have the Germans our kinsmen ; we 
have Gaul bent on the same objects." * 

On another occasion, addressing the people of Treves 
(Treveri) he says : — " What reward do you and other 
enslaved creatures expect for the blood which you have 
shed so often'? What but a hateful service, perpetual 
tribute, the rod, the axe, and the passions of a ruling 
race 1 See how I, the prefect of a single cohort, with 
the Batavians and the Canninefates, a mere fraction of 
Gaul, have destroyed their vast but useless camps, or am 
pressing them with the close blockade of famine and 
the sword. In a word, either freedom will follow on 
our efforts, or, if we are vanquished, we shall but be 
what we were before." t 

The Roman view of the question Tacitus has given 
in the speech of Petilius Cierealis, the ablest officer 
engaged in the German war. He had shown in action 



• i o tt o v - 



* Hist., iv. ch. 14. t Ibid. ch. 31. 



HISTORY'-VITELLIUS. 143 

that the union of Gauls and Germans could not be 
depended on : that although trained in Roman bar- 
racks, the tribes of Rhineland and Batavia were 
unable, in the long-run, to mate and master the dis- 
cipline, the swift and precise movements, of the regular 
legions. Gauls, he said, can have no real affinity with 
Germans. He proceeds : " It was not to defend Italy 
that we" — the Romans — " occupied the borders of the 
Rhine, but to insure that no second Ariovistus should 
seize the empire of Gaul. Do you fancy yourselves to 
be dearer in the eyes of Civilis and the Batavians and 
the Transrhenane tribes than your fathers and grand- 
fathers were to their ancestors ? There have ever been 
the same causes to make the Germans cross over into 
Gaul — lust, avarice, and the longing for a new home, 
prompting them to leave their own marshes and 
deserts, and to possess themselves of this most fertile 
soil, and of you its inhabitants. 

" Gaul has always had its petty kingdoms and intes- 
tine wars, till ycu submitted to our authority. We, 
though so often provoked, have used the right of 
conquest to burden you only with the cost of main- 
taining peace. For the tranquillity of nations cannot 
be preserved without armies ; armies cannot exist 
without pay; pay cannot be furnished without tribute : 
all else is common between us. You often command 
our legions. You rule these and other provinces. 
There is no privilege, no exclusion. From worthy 
emperors you derive equal advantage, though you 
dwell so far away, while cruel rulers are most formid- 
able to those near at hand. Endure the passions and 
rapacity of your masters, just as you bear barren 
seasons, and excessive rains, and oiker natural evils. 



144 TACITUS, 

There will be vices as long as there are men. But 
they are not perpetual, and they are compensated by 
the occurrence of better things." 

Civilis was in the end unsuccessful. He was deserted, 
if not actually betrayed, by his- allies ; with the usual 
fickleness of barbarians, their zeal soon cooled down : 
some thought they did enough for him if they helped 
him to win a battle or two ; some that they did 
enough for themselves when they had plundered a 
Koman colony or camp. Soldiers who went to their 
homes, or turned to common brigandage when they 
pleased, were not fitted to contend long with the 
severely disciplined Roman legions ; and as soon as 
Vespasian was able to pour division after division into 
the seat of war, the Batavian commonwealth ceased to 
exist. Even Civilis perceived at last that he must 
come to terms with the legate, Petilius Cerialis. With 
the preparation for their interview the mutilated 
' History ' closes abruptly \ the fragment, however, is 
too interesting to be omitted. 

The lower classes of the Batavians were murmuring 
at the length of the war ; the nobles were still more 
impatient and spoke in fiercer language. " "We have 
been driven into war," they said, " by the fury of 
Civilis. He sought to counterbalance his private 
wrongs by the destruction of his nation. We are at 
the last extremity. The Germans already are falling 
away from us ; the Gauls have returned to their servi- 
tude ; we must repent, ' and avow our repentance by 
punishing the guilty.' 

" These dispositions did not escape the notice of Civ- 
ilis. He determined to anticipate them, moved not 
only by weariness of his sufferings, but also by the 



'HISTORY'— VI TELLI US. 145 

clinging to life which often breaks the noblest spirits. 
He asked for a conference. The bridge over the river 
Xabalia was cut down, and the two generals advanced 
to the broken extremities. Civilis thus opened the 
conference : 'If it were before a legate of Vitellius that 
I were defending myself, my acts would deserve no 
pardon, my words no credit. All the relations be- 
tween us were those of hatred and hostility, first 
made so by him, and afterwards embittered by me. 
My respect for Vespasian is of long standing. While 
he was still a subject, we were called friends. This 
was known to Primus Antonius, whose letters urged 
me to take up arms, for he feared lest the legions of 
Germany and the youth of Gaul should cross the Alps. 
"What Antonius advised by his letters, Herdeonius 
suggested by word of mouth. I fought the same bat- 
tle in Germany as did Mucianus in Syria, Aponius 

in Msesia, Flavianus in Pannonia.' " 

The mutilation of ancient manuscripts is one of the 
curiosities, no less than of the calamities of literature. 
By an unaccountable coincidence — can it have been 
accident, or was it design ? — the ' Annals ' also, as we 
have them, close with an interrupted speech of the 
dying Thrasea. In each instance so great is our loss 
that we may well apply to Tacitus the lines of 
Milton — 

" Oh sad Virgin, that thy power 
Might raise Musseus from his bower, 



Or call up him that left half told 
The story of Cambuscan bold." 



A. c. vol. xvii. 



CHAPTEE VIIL 

1 HISTORY. , 
VESPASIAN. 

The cool and wary veteran was in no haste to take 
possession of the capital of the Eoman world. He 
had accepted, with seeming reluctance, the title of 
emperor. He might fairly be perplexed by the con- 
duct of Mucianus, since, although when success was 
doubtful he had urged Yespasian to comply with the 
desire of the soldiers, yet, now that the prize was 
won, might he not claim it for himself? Assured of 
the loyalty of his elder son Titus, he might view 
with just suspicion the designs of his younger son 
Domitian — not because this vain and profligate boy 
was in himself formidable, but because it was im- 
possible to foresee what might happen in a city where 
a venal soldiery, a servile senate, and a brutal mob 
might, at any moment, start a new competitor for the 
throne. Were the rich, the eloquent, the magnificent 
Mucianus, to greet him on his arrival with such words 
as — 

"Sir, by your patience, 
I hold you but as subject of this war, 
Not as a brother," *— 

* King Lear, Act v. 



< HISTORY'— VESPASIAN. 147 

what answer could the plain, uneloquent, and low- 
born townsman of Eeate have returned % 

Vespasian, by delaying his entrance into the capital, 
obtained two advantages. Firstly, lie incurred no imme- 
diate unpopularity, as the unfortunate Galba had done, 
through the cruelties and misconduct of his soldiers. 

" When Yitellius was dead," writes the historian, 
" the war indeed had come to an end ; but peace had 
yet to begin. Sword in hand, throughout the capital, 
the conquerors hunted down the conquered with 
merciless hatred. The streets were choked with car- 
nage, the squares and temples reeked with blood ; for 
men were massacred everywhere as chance threw them 
in the way. Soon, as their licence increased, they 
began to search for and drag forth hidden foes. 
Whenever they saw a man tall and young they cut 
him down, making no distinction between soldiers 
and civilians. But the ferocity which, in the first 
impulse of hatred, could be gratified only by blood, 
soon passed into the greed of gain. They let nothing 
be kept secret, nothing be closed. Yitellianists, 
they pretended, might thus be concealed. Here was 
the first step to breaking open private houses — here, 
if resistance were made, a pretext for slaughter. The 
most needy of the populace and the most worthless of 
the slaves did not fail to come forward and betray 
their wealthy masters ; others were denounced by 
their friends. Everywhere were lamentations and 
wailings, and all the miseries of a captured city, till 
the licence of the troops of Otho and Vitellius, once so 
odious, was remembered with regret. The leaders of 
the party, so energetic in kindling strife, were incapable 
of checking the abuse of victory." 



148 TACITUS. 

Secondly, by remaining for some time at Alexan- 
dria, he was in a position to lay an embargo on the 
corn-supply from Egypt, one of the principal granaries 
of Rome. And besides that, he was within a few 
days' sail of the province of Africa, whence she 
derived also a large portion of her daily bread. 
Nothing was so likely to excite the Roman mob as 
even the apprehension of a dearth. Even if Mucianus 
had coveted the purple, he was comparatively feeble so 
long as the Flavian Caesar could retard or withhold 
the staple food of the capital. 

Adverse winds favored Vespasian's purpose of not 
arriving prematurely at Rome. He found that confi- 
dence might be placed in the governor of Syria ; he 
wished, perhaps, that the first necessary severities 
should be over before he presented himself at the 
gates. Meanwhile his sojourn at Alexandria was not 
without favorable results for him. " Vespasian," ob- 
serves Dean Merivale, " was already assuming in the 
eyes of the Romans something of the divine charac- 
ter ; the Flavian race was beginning to supplant the 
Julian in their imagination, or rather, what was want- 
ing to the imagination was supplied by the spirit of 
flattery which represented the hero himself and all 
that concerned him in factitious colours. It began to be 
affirmed that the marvellous rise of the Sabine veteran 
had been signified long before by no doubtful omens at 
home ; a Jewish captive, the historian Josephus, had 
prophetically saluted him as emperor ; the " common " 
and " constant belief " of the Jews, that from the midst 
of them should spring a. ruler of the world, was declared to 
have received in this event its glorious consummation."* 

* History of the Romans, ch. lvii. 



'HIS TOR Y '— VES PA SI A N. 149 

That a prediction which for many generations had 
fed the hopes and soothed the sorrows of the chil- 
dren of Israel should find its fulfilment in the person 
of an obscure Gentile, was certainly not intended by 
prophet or seer. But the faith of believers in it Avas 
singularly confirmed by two events that happened to 
Vespasian in Egypt. It is not by any means easy to 
discover what were the religious feelings of Tacitus ; 
at times he appears to have been a fatalist, at times 
an orthodox believer in the religion of the State ; in 
the following narrative he has evidently no doubt as 
to the truth of the cure, if not of the miracle wrought 
by the emperor. 

" In the months during which Vespasian was wait- 
ing at Alexandria for the periodical return of the 
summer gales and settled weather at sea, many won- 
ders occurred w T hich seemed to point him out as the 
object of the favor of heaven and the partiality of 
the gods. One of the common people of Alexandria, 
whom all men there knew T to be blind, threw himself at 
the emperor's knees, and implored him with groans to 
heal his infirmity. He begged Vespasian that he would 
deign to moisten his cheeks and eyeballs with his 
spittle. Another w 7 ith a diseased hand prayed that 
the limb might feel the print of a Caesar's foot. At 
first Vespasian ridiculed and repulsed them. They 
persisted, and he, though on the one hand he feared 
the scandal of a fruitless attempt, yet, on the other, 
was induced by the entreaties of the men and by the 
language of his flatterers to hope for success. At last 
he ordered that the opinion of physicians should be 
taken, as to whether such blindness and infirmity were 
within the reach of human skill. They discussed the 



150 TACITUS, 

matter from different points of view. 'In the one 
case/ they said, ' the faculty of sight was not wholly 
destroyed, and might return if the obstacles were re- 
moved ; in the other case, the limh, which had fallen 
into a diseased condition, might he restored if a heal- 
ing influence were applied ; ' such, perhaps, might he 
the pleasure of the gods, and the emperor might he 
chosen to he the minister of the divine will ; at any 
rate, all the glory of a successful remedy would he 
Caesars, while the ridicule of failure would fall on the 
sufferers. And so Vespasian, supposing that all things 
were possible to his good fortune, and that nothing was 
any longer past belief, with a joyful countenance, amid 
the intense expectation of the multitude of bystanders, 
accomplished what was required. The hand was in- 
stantly restored to its use, and the light of day again 
shone upon the blind. Persons actually present attest 
both facts, even now, when nothing is to be gained by 
falsehood/ ' 

Voltaire joyfully proclaimed the authenticity of this 
miracle ; Hume applauds the cautious and penetrating 
genius of the historian. Paley dissects the particulars 
of the narrative, and points out a flaw in it. The 
blind man applied to the emperor for his aid " by the 
advice of the god Serapis, whom the Egyptians, de- 
voted as they are to many superstitions, worship more 
than any other divinity." Tacitus, Paley infers, put 
in these words as a saving clause, in order that his 
readers might not suspect him of a weak credulity. It 
will hardly be denied that this pagan miracle was well 
attested. 

His success in the healing of the lame and blind in- 
spired Vespasian with a keen desire to visit the sane- 



'HISTORY'— VESPASIAN. 151 

. tuary of the god who had afforded him this opportu- 
nity for displaying a power, till then quite unsuspected 
by himself, and again a wonder was vouchsafed to a 
Caesar in whom imagination was not a prevailing ele- 
ment, and who probably was content with the religion 
of the State and his Sabine forefathers. A deity so 
wise as Serapis must be able to give him sound advice 
about his own interests. He gave orders that, during 
his visit, all persons should be excluded from the tem- 
ple. He had entered and was absorbed in worship,— 

" When he saw behind him cne of the chief men of 
Egypt, named Basilides, whom he knew at the time to 
be detained by sickness at a considerable distance, as 
much as several days' journey from Alexandria. He 
inquired of the priests, whether Basilides had on 
this day entered the temple. He inquired of others 
whom he met whether he had been seen in the city. At 
length, sending some horsemen, he ascertained that at 
that very instant the man had been eighty miles distant. 
He then concluded that it was a divine apparition, 
and discovered an oracular force in the name of Basi- 
lides [son of a king]." 

The unfavourable winds that detained him at Alex- 
andria deprived Vespasian of the opportunity for pre- 
siding at the solemn and important ceremony of laying 
the foundation of the new Capitol. Its restoration 
was the first care of the senate as soon as peace was 
established in the city ; for while the temple was 
a charred and shapeless ruin, the fortunes of the 
empire seemed to suffer an eclipse. For an account 
of the ceremonial observed we borrow — and English 
readers will be grateful to us for doing so — the words 
of Dean Merivale : — 



152 TACITUS. 

" This pious work was intrusted, according to 
ancient precedent, to one of the most respected of the 
citizens, by name Lucius Vestinus, who, though only 
of knightly family, was equal in personal repute to 
any of the senators. The Haruspices, whom he con- 
sulted, demanded that the ruins of the fallen building 
should be conveyed away and cast into the lowest 
places of the city, and the new temple erected precisely 
on the old foundations ; for the gods, they declared, 
would have no change made in the form of their 
familiar dwelling. On the 20th of June, 70 a.d., 
being a fair and cloudless day, the area of the temple- 
precincts was surrounded with a string of fillets and 
chaplets. Soldiers chosen for their auspicious names 
were marched into it, bearing boughs of the most 
auspicious trees ; and the Vestals, attended by a troop 
of boys and girls, both whose parents were living, 
sprinkled it with water drawn from bubbling founts 
or running streamlets. Then preceded by the pontiffs, 
the praetor Helvidius, stalking round, sanctified the 
space with the mystical washing of sow's, sheep's, and 
bull's blood, and placed their entrails on a grassy 
altar. This done, he invoked Jove, Juno, and 
Minerva, and all the patrons of the empire, to prosper 
the undertaking, and raise by divine assistance their 
temple, founded by the piety of men. Then he 
touched with his hand the connected fillets, and the 
magistrates, the priests, the senators, the knights, with 
a number of the people, lent their strength to draw 
a great stone to the spot where the building was to 
commence. Beneath it they laid pieces of gold and 
silver money, minted for the occasion, as well as of 
unwrought metal ; for the Haruspices forbade either 



'HISTORY'— VESPASIAN. 153 

stone or metal to be used which had been employed 
before for profane purposes. The temple rose from 
the deep substructions of Tarquinius exactly, as was 
required, on the plan, of its predecessor. Formerly, 
when this fane was restored under Catulus, it was 
wished to give greater effect to the cell by placing 
it on a flight of steps ; and it was proposed not to 
heighten the building itself, which the Haruspices 
forbade, but to lower the platform before it. But this 
platform was itself the roof of a labyrinth of vaults 
and galleries, used for offices and storerooms, and this 
expedient was pronounced impracticable. Yespasian, 
more fortunate than his predecessor, obtained permis- 
sion to raise the elevation of the edifice, which now, 
perhaps for the first time, was allowed to overtop the 
colonnades around it, and to fling its broad bulk 
athwart the region of the southern sky, in which the 
auspices were taken from the neighbouring summit of 
the citadel." * 

When Yespasian at last entered his capital, he found 
awaiting him a very onerous task. The evil that Nero 
did lived after him. There was yet a remnant of his 
profligate companions : there were the informers who 
had furnished him with noble or wealthy victims; there 
were criminals to punish, and wrongs and sufferings, 
if possible, to heal ; there were greedy soldiers to fee, 
and there was an empty treasury. Avarice is the only 
grave fault with which Tacitus upbraids his early 
patron. Perhaps a more appropriate term would be 
rigid and necessary economy. To replenish the trea- 
sury from the north-western provinces or Italy was 

* History of the Romans, ch. lvii. 



151 TACITUS. 

next to impossible. The Othonians, Vitellians, and 
the legions of Antonius Primus had not merely carried 
off the money, but also burnt the dwellings and wasted 
the crops of the inhabitants. 

By the mutilation of the ' History/ we lose Tacitus 
for our guide during a most important reign, and be- 
yond his footsteps we cannot go. It will suffice to say 
that Mucianus, after restoring peace and order to Rome, 
preferred the ease of a private station and the enjoy- 
ment of an ample fortune to the cares and perils of a 
throne : that Antonius Primus was coolly thanked for 
his services, and dismissed into obscurity, the only 
trace of him thenceforward being some complimentary 
verses of Martial's : that the extravagance of the 
Julian dynasty was succeeded by the sobriety of the 
Flavian, and that if Rome did not regain a freedom 
she would have abused, she enjoyed a respite from 
tyranny and war, under which she nourished for a 
season. Had the books that recorded Domitian's 
reign been preserved, there can be little doubt that 
the historian would have written them with the pen 
that was afterwards to describe the gloomy period of 
Tiberius, and the hideous excesses of Nero. 

The reign, indeed, of the first Flavian Csesar, extend- 
ing over a period of ten years, passed away in unevent- 
ful tranquillity. Its more remarkable features were 
the simple life and moderation of the imperial house- 
hold : the deference of the emperor to the senate : the 
re-plantation of colonies : peace on the frontiers, after 
the revolts in Judaea and Germany had been sup- 
pressed : the revival and encouragement of learning 
and literature, and even care for the people. 

To English readers the most interesting portion of 



' HIS TOR Y'—VESPA SI A N. 155 

the 'History ' will probably be that in which Tacitus 
treats of the Jewish people arid the commencement 
of the siege of Jerusalem, — and to that we now turn. 
Bearing in mind the historian's relation to Vespa- 
sian and Titus, the conquerors of Juckea, to whom he 
owed his first advancement in public life, his account 
of the origin, the religion, the manners and customs of 
the Jewish people, is inexplicable, and, indeed, consider- 
ing his opportunities for informing himself on the sub- 
ject, without any apparent excuse. It cannot have been 
for want of means of inquiry or materials for truth that 
he thus misrepresents this " peculiar people." Their 
annals were not like those of Egypt, carved on stone, 
or written in symbols or an unknown tongue, both of 
which a century ago were unintelligible to the learned 
of modern Europe ; nor were they stamped on bricks, 
like the archives of Xineveh and Babylon, which 
we are now only learning to read. Every educated 
Roman, and most Roman officials, from governors ol 
provinces to farmers of the taxes, read and spoke 
Greek as easily as they did their native Latin ; and 
the annals, the ritual, the theology ol the Jews were 
communicated to strangers in the pages of the Septua- 
gint more than three centuries before the time of 
Tacitus. The capital as well as the provinces swarmed 
with Jews or proselytes to Judaism, and in any one of 
the fourteen " regions " of Rome there were Eabbins, 
learned in the laws of Moses, and in the chronicles of 
the judges, kings, and high priests of Israel and Judah. 
With such resources at hand, the most inquisitive and 
sceptical of ancient historians contented himself with 
hearsay and idle traditions, and denied to an ancient 
race possessing a written story — to say nothing of sub- 



156 TACITUS. 

iime poetry, of moral and even metaphysical philo- 
sophy of a high order — the care and pains he bestowed 
on the idle rumours or political satires of Eome. 

Still more extraordinary is the apathy of Tacitus in 
this portion of the ' History,' when it is certain that 
he had before him one at least of the works of Elavius 
Josephus. Whether or no he consulted the * Anti- 
quities of the Jews/ or the autobiography of Josephus, 
or his tract against Apion, cannot be told ; but there 
can be no doubt that he studied and borrowed from 
his ' Wars of the Jews ' many facts relating to Vespa- 
sian's campaigns in Galilee, and to the siege of Jeru- 
salem. Perhaps if the ■ History ' were complete as he 
wrote it, we should find that Josephus had been to 
Tacitus, for that portion of his narrative, what Poly- 
bius was to Livy while composing his Decades on the 
Punic and Macedonian wars. 

We now afford our English readers a specimen or 
two of the unaccountable ignorance of Tacitus when 
treating of the origin and rites of the Jewish nation. 
" As I am about to relate," he writes, at the opening 
of the fifth book of the ' History,' " the last days of a 
famous city, it seems appropriate to throw some light 
on its origin. Some say that the Jews were fugitives 
from the island of Crete, who settled on the nearest 
coast of Africa about the time when Saturn was 
driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter." 
" Evidence of this is sought in the name. There is a 
famous mountain in Crete called Ida ; the neighbour- 
ing tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a bar- 
barous lengthening of the national name. Others 
assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing popu- 
lation of Egypt, led by Hierosolvmus and Judas, dis- 



'HISTORY 1 — VESPASIAN. 157 

charged itself into the neighbouring countries. Many, 
again, say that they were a race of Ethiopian origin, 
who in the time of King Cepheus were driven by fear 
and hatred of their neighbours to seek a new dwelling- 
place. Others describe them as an Assyrian horde, 
who, not having sufficient territory, took possession of 
part of Egypt, and founded cities of their own in what 
is called the Hebrew country, lying on the borders of 
Syria." In the last sentences there is a glimpse of 
some research. Had Tacitus peeped into the books of 
Genesis and Exodus, and then into Herodotus 1 * For 
there is here an apparent allusion to the migration of 
Jacob and his sons into Egypt, to the departure from 
the land of Goshen, and to the shepherd kings. 

Then we come to the boils and blains that so 
grievously afflicted the Egyptians, but which Tacitus 
saddles on the Hebrews. King Boccharis, warned by 
the oracle of Hammon, cleanses his realm and expels 
from his land this impure race " detested by the gods." 
It is a calumny of this kind that kindled the wrath 
of Josephus against Apion. Tacitus proceeds : " The 
people, who had been collected after diligent search, 
finding themselves left in a desert, sat for the most 
part in a stupor of grief, till one of the exiles, Moyses 
by name, warned them not to look for any relief from 
God or man, but to trust to themselves, taking for a 
heaven-sent leader that man who should first help 
them to be quit of their present misery. They agreed, 
and in utter ignorance began to advance at random. 
[Nothing, however, distressed them so much as the 
scarcity of water, and they had sunk ready to perish 

* III. U. 



158 TACITUS. 

in all directions over the plain "—here it would seem 
that Tacitus had the hook of Exodus or Josephus 
"before him — " when a herd of wild asses was seen to 
retire from their pasture to a rock shaded by trees. 
Moyses followed them, and, guided by the appearance 
of a grassy spot, discovered an abundant supply of 
water. This furnished relief. After a continuous 
journey for six days, on the seventh they possessed 
themselves of a country from which they expelled the 
inhabitants, and in which they founded a city and a 
temple." This is, indeed, an abridgment of history! 
— the forty years spent in the wilderness and the con- 
quest of Palestine compressed into a period of seven 
days ! 

Now for the rites and ceremonies observed by the 
Jews, according to Tacitus. Mindful of the ser- 
vices done them by the wild asses, they, in their 
holy place, consecrated an image of the animal 
who delivered them from death by thirst in the wil- 
derness. Peculiar and perverse in all they do, the 
worship, invented by Moyses, is utterly unlike that of 
other nations. " Things sacred with us, with them 
have no sanctity, while they allow what with us is 
forbidden. Apis, in the form of an ox, was one of the 
greatest of Egyptian deities ; therefore the Jews sac- 
rifice that animal." As Tacitus in his day must have 
seen many hundreds of oxen sacrificed on Roman altars, 
it is not easy to understand why the Jews were per- 
verse in doing the like. They abhor and abstain from 
swine's flesh, in remembrance of what they suffered 
when infected by the leprosy to which this animal is 
liable. They rest on the seventh day, because it 
brought with it an end of their toils ; and " after a 



'HISTORY'— VESPASIAN. 159 

while the charm of indolence beguiled them into giving 
up the seventh year also to inaction." 

And yet this eccentric people, who feared not the 
gods and despised or hated all uncircumcised man- 
kind — who had not an idol in their temple, nor per- 
mitted a picture to enter their dwellings — whose 
" customs, at once perverse and disgusting, owed 
their strength to their very badness," — were not with- 
out their virtues, and these puzzled Tacitus far more 
than their vices. To their own countrymen, and to 
converts to their religion, they are singularly charit- 
able • and be it remarked that charity, in the Jewish 
and Christian import of the word, was unknown either 
to Greeks or Eomans. Nay, Tacitus even cannot 
help admiring their conception of the Deity, or some 
of their social practices. "It is a crime with them 
to kill a newly-born infant." It was not a crime at 
Eome. The Jews held "that the souls of all who 
perish in battle, or by the hands of the executioner, are 
immortal;" and in this faith they fought valiantly; 
they contemned death ; they rejoiced in the number of 
their children. Of " the Deity, as one in essence, they 
have purely mental conceptions. They call those pro- 
fane who make representations of God in human shape 
out of perishable materials. They believe that Being to 
be supreme and eternal, capable neither of representa- 
tion nor of decay. They therefore do not allow any 
images to stand in their cities, much less in their temples. 
This flattery is not paid to their kings, nor this honor 
to our emperors." So far so good ; but then follows 
a most unfortunate conjecture. " From the fact that 
the Jewish priests used to chant to the music of flutes 
and cymbals, and to wear garlands of ivy, and that a 



160 TACITUS. 

golden vine was found in the temple, some have 
thought that they worshipped Father Liber (Bacchus), 
the conqueror of the East, though their institutions do 
not by any means harmonise with the theory ; for 
Liber established a festive and cheerful worship, while 
the Jewish religion is tasteless and mean/ 

Tacitus' s credulity, or negligence in inquiry, as 
regards the religion of the Jews, did not extend to 
the creeds or ceremonies of other nations ; on the 
contrary, he occasionally indulges himself and his 
readers also with digressions on the subject. The 
vision beheld by Vespasian in the temple of Serapis 
leads him to describe the nature of that popular deity, 
and the cause and manner of his introduction into 
Alexandria. He mentions with evident interest the 
visit of Germanicus to the oracle of the Clarian Apollo, 
and he acquainted himself with the process used in 
consultation. " jN"o Pythoness/' he says, with a glance 
at Delphi and other shrines, "represents the god at 
Claros, but a priest, chosen from certain families, 
especially a Milesian. This hierophant, after taking 
down the names and numbers of the inquirers, 
descends into an oracular cavern in which there is a 
sacred spring. He drinks of its water ; and then, 
though often ignorant -of letters and ungifted with 
poetic talent, he gives the Clarian divinity's answers 
in verse, of which the subject is the secret or imparted 
wishes of the consultors of the oracle." In a similar 
manner he records the visit of Titus, then travelling 
from Corinth to Syria, to the temple of the Paphian 
Venus in the island of Cyprus • and he thinks it not 
tedious to bestow a few words on the origin of the 
worship, the antiquity of the building, and the form 



'HISTORY'— VESPASIAN. 161 

of the goddess, — since nowhere else is she thus repre- 
sented. The Venus of Paphos did not require a 
sculptor ; an ordinary stone - mason sufficed. " Her 
image does not bear a human shape ; it is a rounded 
mass, rising like a cone from a broad base to a small 
circumference." Hers was a primitive and humane 
worship. It was " forbidden to pour blood on the 
altar. The place of sacrifice was served only with 
prayers and pure flame ; and though it stands in the 
open air it is never wet with rain." Animals, indeed, 
were offered, according to the whim of the worship- 
pers j but they were always of " the male sex — and 
the surest prognostics were seen in the entrails of 
kids." These bloody rites were evidently of more 
recent date than the original sacrifices, just as the 
sanguinary oblations of the Aztecs supplanted the 
fruit and flower offerings of the original Mexicans. 

Two causes for the ignorance or the indolence of 
Tacitus in this account of the Jews may be surmised. 
One, a general repugnance to the Hebrew race, that 
pervaded the Gentile world, and which is manifested 
by Roman satirists as well as by a sarcastic historian. 
The other is the arrogance displayed by Romans gener- 
ally towards their Asiatic subjects, especially to the 
Syrians and Egyptians, with whom they were wont to 
confound the followers of Moses. Of each of these races 
the religious observances were often, though in vain, pro- 
scribed by the Roman Government, whether republican 
or imperial \ and the worshippers of Isis, Astarte, and 
Jehovah were driven from the capital and Italy. In 
the 'Annals' Tacitus never mentions the Jews without 
some expression of contempt ; and when some thou- 
sands of them were sent, in the reign of Tiberius, to 
a. c, vol. xvii. L 



162 TACITUS. 

pine or perish in tlie unwholesome climate of Sardinia 
— the Cayenne of Home, — he coolly remarks, it was a 
cheap riddance (vile damnum) — a loss of lives not 
worth consideration. 

But when the historian gets clear of the rocks and 
shallows of rumour and remote events, his strength 
returns to him ; and the poor remnant of his narra- 
tive that we have of the Jewish war enables us to 
measure as well as mourn for the portions we have 
lost. After a brief sketch of former invasions of Judsea 
by the Romans, he comes to that final rebellion which 
ended with the last dispersion of the Jewish people, 
and the demolition of Jerusalem itself. Cneius Pom- 
peius in 63 a.d. had dismantled the walls of the city, 
but had left the temple standing. Judasa under its 
Maccabsean pontiffs had regained much of her early 
rank among nations, and under Herod, and afterwards 
under Agrippa, been dignified with the title of a king- 
dom. On the death of the latter it had become an 
appanage of the vast province of Syria ; still it had 
not ceased to be a recognised portion of the empire. 
But the hour was at hand for the complete fulfilment 
of prophecies delivered long before there was an augur 
in Rome — of prophecies which seemed to have been 
accomplished when the Assyrian carried off Israel and 
Judah to the banks of the Euphrates, and made a heap 
of ruins the temple of Jehovah and the city of David. 
But the end was not to be under the first of the four 
great monarchies, but under the last. 

" Peace," says Tacitus, " having been established in 
Italy, foreign affairs were once more remembered. Our 
indignation was heightened by the 'circumstance that 
the Jews alone had not submitted. ' " Vespasian in G6 



'HISTORY'— VESPASIAN. 163 

had been sent by Nero to put down the Jewish muti- 
neers, and within the space of two summers had suc- 
ceeded in making himself master of the entire level 
country and of all the cities, except Jerusalem. Ves- 
pasian was summoned from the camp to a throne, and 
his son Titus took his place in Judea. 

We conclude this chapter with extracts from the 
' History.' The English readers who may have looked 
into the 'Wars of the Jews* by Josephus, will per- 
ceive that Tacitus had before him the narrative of a 
conspicuous actor in the great catastrophe of the He- 
brew nation. 

"Prodigies had occurred, which this nation, prone 
to superstition, but hating all religious rites, did not 
deem it lawful to expiate by offering and sacrifice. 
There had been seen hosts joining battles in the skies, 
the fiery gleam of arms, the temple illuminated by a 
sudden radiance from the clouds. The doors of the 
inner shrine were suddenly thrown open, and a voice 
of more than mortal tone was heard to cry that the 
gods w 7 ere departing. At the same instant there was 
a mighty stir as of departure. Some few put a fearful 
meaning on these events, but in most there was a firm 
persuasion that in the ancient records of their priests 
was contained a prediction of how at this very time 
the East was to grow powerful, and rulers coming 
from Judaea were to acquire universal empire. These 
mysterious prophecies had pointed to Vespasian and 
Titus ; but the common people, with the usual blind- 
ness of ambition, had interpreted these mighty destinies 
of themselves, and could not be brought even by 
disasters to believe the truth. I have heard that the 
total number of the besieged, of every age and both 



164 TACITUS. 

sexes, amounted to six hundred thousand. All who . 
were able bore arms, and a number more than propor- 
tionate to the population had the courage to do so. 
Men and women showed equal resolution, and life 
seemed more terrible than death, if they were to be 
forced to leave their country." 

" The commanding situation of the city had been 
strengthened by enormous works, which would have 
been a thorough defence even for level ground. Two 
hills of great height were fenced in by walls which, 
had been skilfully obliqued or bent inwards, in such a 
manner that the flank of an assailant was exposed to 
missiles. The rock terminated in a precipice ; the 
towers were raised to a height of sixty feet, where the 
hill lent its aid to the fortifications — where the ground 
fell, to a height of one hundred and twenty. They 
had a marvellous appearance, and to a distant spectator 
seemed to be of uniform elevation. Within were other 
walls surrounding the palace, and, rising to a con- 
spicuous height, the tower Antonia, so called by 
Herod, in honour of Marcus Antonius. 

" The temple resembled a citadel, and had its own 
walls, which were more laboriously constructed than 
the others. Even the colonnades with which it was 
surrounded formed an admirable outwork. It con- 
tained an inexhaustible spring: there were subterranean 
excavations in the hill, and tanks and cisterns for 
holding rain-water. The founders of the State had 
foreseen that frequent wars would result from the 
singularity of its customs, and so had made every pro- 
vision against the most protracted siege. After the 
capture uf their city by Pompeius, experience and 
apprehension had taught them much. Availing them- 



1 HI ST OR 7 '— VES* A SI A X. 165 

selves of the sordid policy of the Claudian era to 
purchase the right of fortification, they raised in time 
of peace such avails as were suited for war. Their num- 
bers were increased by a vast rabble collected from the 
overthrow of the other cities [by Vespasian]. All the 
most obstinate rebels had escaped into the place, and 
perpetual seditions were the consequence. There were 
three generals and as many armies. Simon held the 
outer and larger circuit of walls. John, also called Bar- 
gioras, occupied the middle city ; Eleazar had fortified 
the temple. John and Simon were strong in numbers 
and equipment, Eleazar in position. There were con- 
tinual skirmishes, surprises, and incendiary tires, and a 
vast quantity of corn was burnt. Before long, John 
sent some emissaries, who, under presence of sacrificing, 
slaughtered Eleazar and his partisans, and gained pos- 
session of the temple. The city was thus divided 
between two factions, till, as the Bomans approached, 
war with the foreigner brought about a reconciliation." 

" Such was this city and nation ; and Titus Caesar, 
seeing that the position forbade an assault or any of the 
more rapid operations of war, determined to proceed 
by earthworks and covered approaches. The legicns 
had their respective duties assigned to them, and there 
was a cessation from fighting, till all the inventions 
used in ancient warfare, or devised by modern in- 
genuity, for the reduction of cities, were constructed." 

TTe have seen what the pen of Tacitus could do when 
relating the storming and conflagration -of the Capitol 
in the civil war, and so may imagine how he described 
the total demolition of a far older and holier temple. 
While watching in Borne the builders at their work of 
restoration of the one, and hearing the proclamation in 



166 TACITUS. 

the Forum of the destruction of the other shrine, he may 
have said to himself: 'the pride of a barbarous and 
superstitious people is humbled for ever; but the glory 
of Jupiter, best and greatest, will always endure. From 
the fane of the Jews, the gods have departed, but the 
pontifex and the silent virgin will never cease to climb 
the Capitoline Hill.' " The destruction/' says Dean 
Merivale, " never to be repaired, of the material temple 
of the Hebrews, cut the cords which bound the Christian 
faith to its local habitation, and launched it, under the 
hand of Providence, on its career of spiritual conquest ; 
while the boasted reputation of the Capitol was a vain 
attempt to retain hold of the past, to revive the lost 
or perishing, to reattach to new conditions of thought 
an outworn creed of antiquity." * 

* History of Romans under the Empire, vi. 598. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ON THE ORATORS ; OR THE CAUSES OP THE DECLINE 

OF ELOQUENCE. 

1 The Dialogue on the Orators ' is now generally ad- 
mitted to have been written by Tacitus, although for- 
merly it was ascribed to others — among them to Quin- 
tilian or the younger Pliny. The grounds of doubt 
arose from a fancied dissimilarity in its style to that of 
the unquestioned works of the historian. But there is 
nothing in the language of this dialogue that need dis- 
entitle it to a place among his writings. On the con- 
trary, it displays several marks of his authorship, as 
well in the construction of sentences as in a sarcastic 
turn of mind. The ' Annals ' are his latest, the ' Dia- 
logue ' is probably his earliest composition. The latter 
is more diffuse, the former more condensed ; and this 
would naturally be the difference between the style of 
a young and that of a mature and perhaps aged writer. 
The time at which Tacitus was training himself for 
the bar was one of conflict between those who desired 
to return to a healthier period of eloquence — and espe- 
cially to the era of Hortensius and Cicero — and those who 
clung to modern fashion, maintaining that it was better 
suited to their more polished age. The Ciceronian man- 
ner, the former argued, attained to the highest perfec- 



168 TACITUS. 

tion of a natural style. They applauded the graceful 
and often the dignified character of his sentences, the 
richness of his diction, his art in opening a speech, 
his felicity in shaping it, and the force or splendour 
of his perorations. Yet these virtues, it was main- 
tained "by the latter, would be accounted tedious 
by a generation o* jurors and bearers less patient 
than their forefathers were of long sentences and 
artistically - constructed periods. The champions of 
the new fashion had some ground for their opinion. 
Not only are the races of men like leaves on trees, but 
their tastes also. The pulpit eloquence of Isaac Bar- 
row might perplex rather than edify a modern congre- 
gation ; the speeches of Chesterfield or Burke would 
more astonish than persuade a House of Commons 
at the present day. Sensational speeches were, in 
the earlier years of Tacitus, as much in vogue as sensa- 
tional plays and novels are now in Britain. The 
fashion in style set in great measure by Seneca, and 
against which Quintilian, while admitting that authors 
great gifts, so warmly protested, affected the language 
of the bar as well as that of philosophy or literature. 
In Nero's time, when this half - prosaic, half- poetic 
diction reached its height, nothing would go down 
with those who frequented law courts or lecture rooms 
except short, sharp, epigrammatically-turned sentences. 
Commonplace thoughts, in order to make them appear 
new, rare, or ingenious, were twisted into innumerable 
forms, for the construction of which professors of 
rhetoric drew up rules and supplied examples. The 
Controversial and Suasorian essays of the oldest of the 
Senecas, who might have listened to Cicero himself, are 
a sort of recipe-books for a culinary process of dealing 



THE ORATORS. 169 

with eloquence. A better day, however, was at hand. 
Tacitus marks as the period of the greatest sensual 
excesses in Eome that which separates the battle of 
Actium from the accession of Xerva ; and he speaks of 
Vespasian's reign as the beginning of an epoch of im- 
provement in morals and of amended taste in litera- 
ture. The ' Dialogue on the Orators,' composed, if not 
made public, in the fifth year of that emperor's reign, 
displays the leading features of the controversy between 
the reformers and the corrupters of the Latin lan- 
guage. The advocates of a simpler and less artificial 
manner did not gain a complete victory, nor their 
opponents suffer an entire defeat. Even Quintilian, 
who, as he himself tells us, was the first to uplift his 
voice against a depraved fashion in writing and speak- 
ing, does not recommend a complete return to the 
theory or practice of the Ciceronian time. And he 
judged wisely and well. Xo sensible critic of the 
present moment would advise a recurrence to the 
language of Bacon or Addison. In his own writings 
Quintilian obeyed the laws which he prescribed to his 
pupils and readers. But although he set the example 
of a better form, he could not rekindle the spirit and 
passionate heat of the Catilinarian and Philippic ora- 
tions. Some of the vices of the Xeronian period were 
abandoned ; yet even Tacitus himself is not quite free 
from the blemish of epigrammatic sentences, while in the 
verse of the time the reaction w^as even less complete. 

Besides its proper subject, the decline and the pos- 
sible revival of Eoman oratory, the ' Dialogue' contains 
much information on literature generally. This will 
appear from a short sketch of its plot and dramatis 
personve. Like many of Cicero's treatises on oratory 



170 TACITUS. 

and philosophy, it professes to "be a reminiscence of 
a conversation heard by the author himself, and 
reported by him afterwards to a friend. " You 
have often inquired of me, my good friend Justus 
Fabius," says Tacitus, " how and whence it comes that, 
while former times display a series of orators con- 
spicuous for ability and their renown, the present age, 
devoid of them, and without any claim to the praise of 
eloquence, has scarcely retained even the name of an 
orator. By that appellation we understand only men 
of a bygone time ; whereas in these days eloquent 
men are entitled speakers, pleaders, advocates, patrons ; 
in short, everything else except — orators." 

The dispute, like so many controversies, polemical 
or political, before and since, began upon a question 
not very nearly related to it. Caius Curiatius Maternus, 
a promising young barrister, was giving much anxiety 
to his friend Marcus Aper, a pleader then in high 
repute, by his passion for writing plays and by his 
neglect of the weightier matters of the law. In the 
first place, Maternus could not serve two masters. If 
he went on at his present rate in such unprofitable 
studies, he must lose many good clients. "Your 
friends/' said Aper to him, " expect your patronage ; 
the colonies invoke your aid ; and municipal cities call 
for you in the courts. Such practice as you could 
command would soon make you rich. Think, I be- 
seech you, what pretty pickings Eprius Marcellus and 
Yibius Crispus have already made by their profession, 
and no one knows who their fathers were ; though 
everybody is aware that they were as poor as rats a few 
years ago. But neglect of your business is not the 
worst of it. Those blessed tragedies of yours will, by 



THE ORATORS. 171 

Hercules ! get you into a serious scrape. Yesterday 
you read to an audience your last tragedy, ' Cato.' You 
must have heard already, for all the town is talking 
of it, that this piece is not relished in high quarters. 
Folks are saying that you have thought much more 
of your hero than of yourself. Him, a grumbling old 
commonwealth man, you have drawn in the brightest 
colours. And what is Cato to you, or you to Cato, 
that you should run the risk of being sent on his ac- 
count into exile, to starve on some barren island ? " 

A per was accompanied on this visit by another 
ornament of the Forum, and a common friend of 
Maternus and himself — Julius Secundus, an orator, 
of whom Quintilian entertained great expectations. 
They were not fulfilled, for Julius died young. The 
remonstrances of Aper were heard with equanimity 
by Maternus. " I was quite prepared for this," he 
says ; " to differ on this subject is grown familiar to 
us both. You wage incessant war against poetry : I 
consider it a client whom I am bound to defend. But 
it happens, luckily, that on this occasion a competent 
arbiter of our standing feud is present. Our friend 
Secundus, after hearing what we have each to say, 
will either enjoin me to give up writing verses, or, as 
I hope, will encourage me to abandon a profession I 
am weary of, and to pursue one in which I delight. * 
Secundus doubts whether Aper will accept him as an 
umpire. " To tell you the truth," he says, " though I 
cannot myself make verses, I feel a partiality for those 
who can, especially for that excellent man and no less 
excellent poet, Saleius Bassus." 

" Hang Saleius Bassus," retorts Aper, " and all his 
generation ! Let him and all of his sort spin verses 



L72 TACITUS. 

as they list without interruption. His is not a case 
in point. He could not make tenpence a-day at the 
bar. But Maternus is something more and far better 
than a verse-monger. Why should he waste precious 
hours on his * Cato ' or ' Thyestes,' his * Agamemnon ' 
or 'Domitius'?' — he who is formed by nature to 
reach the heights of manly eloquence. As for your 
Saleius Bassus, it was very kind in Yespasian to 
give him lately fifty pounds ; nay, the more so be- 
cause our Caesar is not usually so free of his money. 
But why should you, Maternus, who can earn thrice 
that sum when the courts are sitting, desire to put 
yourself on a level with an imperial pensioner 1 At 
the best, poets are very slenderly paid." And Aper 
then goes on pointing out the privations and diffi- 
culties of the worshippers of the Muses, much in the 
strain of Johnson's lines : — 

" Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, 
And pause awhile from letters to be wise ; 
There mark what ills the scholar's life assail — 
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail." 

The vehement attack on poets by Aper is rebutted 
with great energy by Maternus ; but their combat is 
but a skirmish preparatory to the main battle that fol- 
lows, on the comparative merits of the old and the 
new schools of oratory. And now a fourth speaker 
is introduced in the 'Dialogue' — Yipstanus Messala, 
a soldier, and a pleader of great reputation, to whom 
Tacitus in his 'History' pays this singular tribute, 
that he was the only man of note who went over from 
Yitellius to Yespasian from honest motives. It is now 
seen that the ' Dialogue on Oratory ' is constructed on 



THE ORATORS. 173 

the plan often adopted by Cicero in similar treatises. 
In the first place, the subject of the conversation is 
said to have been heard in his youth by the author of 
it — and in that respect Cicero follows the example set 
him by Plato ; next, there is a little preliminary dis- 
cussion that soon branches out into the main argu- 
ment ; thirdly, a friend joins the company after the 
debate has made some progress ; and lastly, Aper in 
Tacitus, and Antonius in Cicero, are nearly counterparts 
of each other in the character of their eloquence. It 
was said of Aper at the time that he owed his fame, 
not to art or literature, but to the natural powers of a 
vigorous understanding ; and Antonius is made to 
say that " his fame would be the greater if he were 
regarded as a man wholly illiterate and void of edu- 
cation." In the chapter on his 'Life/ it was only possible 
to conjecture what was the training of Tacitus at the 
bar ; but the dialogue now under examination may help 
us to perceive that he was a student of the oratorical 
works of the Ciceronian age, while his ' Annals ' afford 
many tokens of his having been well versed in the 
poetry of Virgil, and perhaps also in that of many 
other writers of the Augustan period, Livy included. 

" English Readers " cannot be expected to take any 
lively interest in the respective merits of the old or 
new Roman orators. But they may not object to 
a brief sketch of what was thought to constitute a 
liberal education in Tacitus' s day. The future historian 
may often be traced in the opinions of the juvenile 
author of this ' Dialogue.' His allusions to the bygone 
time are frequently a covert satire on the age in which 
he wrote. Some of the following extracts will show 
that even if Juvenal and Tacitus never met each other 



17 i TACITUS. 

amid the vast population of Kome — where the one 
probably rented a fifth-story chamber, and the other 
a well-appointed house — yet that their views of the 
general corruption of literature, as well as of morals, 
coincided as closely as if they had sat at the same 
table, or exchanged opinions in a library or a lecture- 
room. 

Mcssala takes the side of the older orators against 
Aper, the advocate of the new eloquence. He say's : 
"Before entering on the subject of the decay of elo- 
quence, it w r ill not be useless to look back to the sys- 
tem of education that prevailed in former times, and 
to the strict discipline of our ancestors, in a point of 
so much moment as the formation of youth. In the 
times to which I now refer, the son of every family was 
the legitimate offspring of a virtuous mother " This 
not very charitable, yet perhaps not untrue, statement, 
is in the very spirit of Juvenal and Martial, who 
"knew the town" as well as the Higgins of Pope did. 
" The infant, as soon as born, was not consigned to the 
mean dwelling of a hireling nurse, but was reared and 
cherished in the bosom of a tender parent. To regu- 
late all household affairs and attend to her children 
was, at that time, the highest commendation of women. 
Some kinswoman of mature years, and distinguished 
by the purity of her life, was chosen for the guardian 
of the child. In her presence no indecent word or act 
was permitted. To her was intrusted the direction of 
the studies of her charge ; nay more, his sports and 
recreations also, so that all might be conducted with 
modesty and respect for virtue. The tendency of this 
strict discipline w T as, that the nature of the young 
being trained up in purity and honesty, and not being 



THE ORATORS. 175 

warped by evil desires, they with their whole heart 
embraced sound instruction, and were fitted for their 
future calling, whether their inclination led them to a 
military career, to the knowledge of law, or the pur 
suits of eloquence. " 

" Whereas, nowadays," Messala continues, " an in- 
fant, as soon as it is born, is handed over to some 
paltry Greek maid-servant, who has for her assistants 
one or more of the most rascally of the slaves, utterly un- 
fit for any grave business. By their idle tales and blun- 
ders the tender and uninstructed minds of the children 
are stained, and not a soul in the house cares what he 
does or says before his young master. ^Nay, the 
parents themselves do not accustom them to honesty 
or modesty, but make them familiar with ribaldry and 
chattering, so that in time they grow shameless and 
void of respect for themselves or others. Vices that 
may be said to be proper and peculiar to this city, it 
seems to me, they catch before their birth — such as 
a passion for stage-plays, gladiators, and horse-races. 
What room for honest pursuits is left for minds so 
occupied, or rather blockaded ] " 

This was a worshipful system of education to begin 
with, and it did not improve with the removal of the 
children from the nursery to school. Xo pains were 
taken to cultivate taste by reading the best authors ; 
history and every branch of useful knowledge were 
neglected ; even the study of men and manners was 
ignored. Preceptors were chosen at hap-hazard, and 
all educational duties supposed to be fulfilled, provided 
only there was a decent form of instruction, in which 
the tutor was often incompetent to give, and the pupil 
reluctant to gain, any useful knowledge. After such a 



176 TACITUS, 

scholastic programme as this, we are prepared for 
Messala's saying — " It is notorious that eloquence, 
with the rest of the polite arts, has lost its former 
lustre, yet these evil effects are not owing to a dearth 
of men or decay of ability. The true causes of this 
decadence are the apathy of parents, the ignorance of 
instructors, the total neglect of sound discipline. The 
mischief began at Eome, it has overrun Italy, and is 
now rapidly pervading the provinces." 

Messala proceeds to contrast the education of the 
young orator in his time with that which had prevailed 
in a better age. He describes the toil, the discipline, the 
exercises by which the aspirant to public honours was 
trained for his profession. His home-education had 
been sound. When arrived at the proper age for higher 
instruction, he was taken by his father, or some near 
relative, his guardian, to some eminent orator of the 
day. He attended his instructor on all occasions. 
With him he visited the Forum, listened to his 
pleadings in the courts of justice, noted in his 
books or his memory his public harangues, marked 
him when moved by passion, or when calmly stating 
his case, and admired his art or facility when the 
subject required a prompt and unstudied reply. Thus 
on the field of battle he learned the rudiments of 
rhetorical warfare. Nor did he confine his attention 
to his patron alone; he watched diligently the methods 
and the habits of other speakers, and so was the better 
able to distinguish between excellences and defects, or 
at least to select the species of eloquence most adapted 
to his own powers or temperament. This practical 
education was in strict conformity with the general 
character of the Roman mind The greatest of Latin 



TEE ORATORS. 177 

poets had told his countrymen that to other nations had 
been granted, in a measure denied to them, the arts of 
the sculptor and the painter, of the natural philo- 
sopher, nay, even of eloquence itself. But the lot as- 
signed by the poet to the Eoman people was to govern 
the human race, to lower the haughty, to spare the 
humble, to promote and cherish peace ; and among the 
instruments by which their destiny would be accom- 
plished, a liberal eloquence was not the least effective. 
The discipline of the orator, indeed, was scarcely 
less severe in the good old times than that which 
qualified the soldier for his duties in war. " Military 
exercises were the important and unremitted object of 
the discipline of the legions. The recruits and young 
soldiers were constantly trained, both in the morning 
and in the evening, nor was age or knowledge allowed 
to excuse the veterans from the daily repetition of 
what they had completely learnt." * Even Cicero, 
when at the zenith of his fame, did not permit him- 
self to forego the exercises of his assiduous youth ; and 
the wary Augustus prepared for his speeches to the 
senate by declamation in his closet. "The orator," 
proceeds Messala, " was a real combatant matched and 
mated with an earnest antagonist, not a gladiator in a 
mock contest, fighting for a prize. His was a struggle 
for victory, before an audience always changing, yet 
always ' frequent and full.' " He addressed enemies as 
well as admirers, and both were severe critics of his 
merits or defects. In this clash of opinions the true 
orator flourished. He did not depend on the plaudits 
of the benches occupied by his friends only, but on the 
cheers extorted by him from those on which his oppo- 

* Gibbon, ' Decline and Fall,' ch. L 
a. c. vol. xvii. M 



178 TACITUS. 

nents, and perhaps his personal or political foes, were 
seated ; and the best of suffrages is reluctant applause. 
Messala then goes on to describe the modern system 
of oratorical training. " Our young men," he says, 
with palpable indignation, "are taken to the schools 
of professors, who call themselves rhetoricians, whereas 
a more fitting name for them would be • impostors.' 
Such gentry as now educate our youth were, in better 
times than ours, silenced by the censors, and ordered, 
as Cicero tells us, ' to shut up their schools of impu- 
dence.' Eut no such wholesome discipline exists 
now, and our students are put in charge of oratorical 
mountebanks." He cannot decide whether the lecture- 
room itself, the company frequenting it, or the course 
of instruction employed, were the more prejudicial to 
the pupils, at least to such of them as have any true 
vocation for the art and mystery of eloquence. Boy- 
novices were set to declaim to boys, young men to 
young men. Ignorant speakers addressed hearers as 
ignorant as themselves. The very subjects on which 
they wrangled were useless. "They are of two kinds — 
persuasive or controversial. The former, supposed to be 
the easier, is usually assigned to the younger scholars ; 
the latter is reserved for the more advanced. Eut for 
the real business of the bar, and for the objects of the 
advocate, both sorts are equally idle. No judge, de- 
serving the name, would be persuaded, no opponent 
confuted, by these windy declamations. The topics 
chosen for exercise are alike remote from truth or even 
probability. ' Is it lawful to slay a tyrant ? if not, what 
should be the punishment of the tyrannicide 1 ' ' What 
rites and ceremonies are proper to be used during a 
raging pestilence V * If married women break their 



THE ORATORS. 179 

nuptial vows, or if maidens are wronged, how ought 
the adulterer or the seducer to be dualt with ? ' Such 
is the skimble-scamble stuff with which our budding 
orators are now crammed ! Even in the lecture-room, 
these themes are hackneyed, while in the courts of 
justice they are never debated. The language in 
which such frivolous exercises are written is on a par 
with the emptiness of the questions. It is unnatural, 
gaudy, bombastic. The superstructure is answerable 
to the foundation. In such * schools of impudence ' 
our lads may be taught to chatter, but not to speak 
either in the senate or at the bar." * 

The close of Messala's portion in the ' Dialogue,' 
and the earlier sections of that of Maternus, are un- 
fortunately lost. He is made to discourse at the end, 
as he is reported to have done at first, with a fervour 
that seemed to lift him above himself. He evidently 
in part agreed with the defender of the moderns, 
Marcus A per, and partly with the defender of the 
ancients, Yip st anus Messala. That we no longer pro- 
duce such orators as adorned the commonwealth, as 
well in its decline as in its " most high and palmy 

* Juvenal, often the best commentator on his contemporary, 
Tacitus, notices the depraved fashion of these mock dis- 
courses : — 

" But Vectius, that adamantine frame ! 
Has oped a Rhetoric school of no mean fame, 
Where boys, in long succession, rave and storm 
At tyrann}% through many a crowded form. 
The exercise he lately, sitting, read, 
Standing, distracts his miserable head, 
And every day, and every hour, affords 
The self-same subject, in the self-same words," &c. 

—Sat. vii. [Ginordl. 



180 TACITUS. 

state," is owing to the character of the times more 
than to the men living in them. Karely does a quiet, 
settled, and uniform government afford an opportunity 
for eloquence of the highest order. " Great " — that is, 
passionate " eloquence " — such as pervades the Verrine, 
Catilinarian, and Philippic speeches of Cicero—" like 
flame, demands nourishment." Political commotions 
excite it; and the longer it burns the brighter its light. 
The spirit of the older speakers was fed by the turbu- 
lence of their age. He who could wield to his will a 
fierce democracy became its idol. Then every grade 
of society took a deep interest in public events and 
public men. Then few were content to give a silent 
vote in the senate, or shrank from the turmoil of the 
hustings and the Forum. In the conflict of parties, 
laws were multiplied ; and scarcely a bill became law 
without a fierce opposition to it. The leading chiefs 
were the favourite demagogues. The magistrates were 
often engaged entire days in debate \ and sometimes it 
was midnight before the assembly broke up. The 
people and the senate were generally at war with each 
other : the nobles themselves were divided by constant 
factions : even members of the same house were 
at variance ; and no citizen was so revered as to be 
exempt from impeachment. Hence that flame of elo- 
quence which blazed continually under the republican 
government ; and honce the fuel tL.it kept it alive. 

" And remember," continues Maternus, " the position 
of the orator at that time." His importance and influ- 
ence were not confined to the senate or the people. 
Foreign nat:'ons courted his friendship. Praetors and 
proconsuls going out to their provinces, or returning 
from them, did him homage. He could not stir from 



TEE ORATORS. 181 

his house without observation and an obsequious 
crowd following him to the rostrum or the senate- 
house, or to the city gates if he were going to his 
country seat. Even if he were not entitled to lictors 
or fasces at the moment, yet as a private citizen his 
opinion influenced gowned senators ; and his fame was 
well known even to the inhabitants of garrets and 
cellars, who picked up the crumbs from rich men's 
tables, when the sacrifices in the temples did not 
afford them meat, or the measure of corn supplied by 
the State was exhausted. 

Maternus admits that the forms of proceeding and 
the rules of practice in his time were more conducive 
than those observed by the ancients to the purposes of 
truth and justice. There was then more freedom for 
the orator. He was not, as he is now, limited to a few 
hours in the delivery of a speech. If his genius 
prompted him, he might expatiate on the case in 
hand ; if it suited his convenience, he might adjourn 
it. Maternus descends to minute particulars, though 
he thinks it not unlikely that his hearers will smile at 
them. The Greek or Roman orator was always in 
some degree an actor also. Hortensius, Cicero's most 
formidable antagonist, was very particular as to the 
plaits in his gown and the arrangement of his hair ; 
and Caius Gracchus modulated his voice by a sort of 
pitch-pipe sounded when he spoke in too high or too 
low a key by an attendant slave. " But such niceties," 
says Maternus, " are no longer observed. The very 
robe now worn at the bar has an air of meanness. It 
sits close to the person : it renders graceful gestures 
impossible. Again, the courts of judicature are un- 
favourable to the speaker in them. Causes are now 



182 TACITUS. 

heard in small narrow rooms, in which it is not neces- 
sary to raise the voice, or to display energy in pleading. 
Whereas the true orator, like a noble horse, requires 
liberty and space. Before a few hearers his spirit 
droops : in a confined room his genius flags." 

He winds up his argument with some timely and 
sound consolation to the men of his time. Oratory 
may be on the decline ; but have we nothing to 
counterbalance the loss of it? Would we, if the 
choice were offered to us, return to the days when 
Rome exhibited one perpetual scene of contention? 
Could all the eloquence of the Gracchi atone for the 
laws which they imposed on their country 1 Did the 
fame that Cicero won by eloquence compensate him 
for the tragic end to which his orations against Marcus 
Antonius brought him'? Believe me, my excellent 
friends, had it been your lot to live under the old 
republic, you would have been as famous, and perhaps 
as much harassed by anxiety and envy, as the orators 
you so much admire ; and had it been their lot to live 
in these piping times of peace, the heroes of the bar 
would have acquiesced in the tranquillity we enjoy. 
It may not be easy — it may be impossible — for us to 
attain a great and splendid reputation as orators ; but we 
can at least be content with the calmer tenor of the pre- 
sent age, and applaud, without envying, our ancestors. 

It would be idle to speculate whether Tacitus 
imaged himself in the characters of Julius Secundus, 
of Yipstanus Messala, or of Curiatius Maternus. 
The speeches he ascribes to them respectively display 
oratorical qualities of a very high order, especially 
when we remember that the ' Dialogue ' is one of his 
earliest works. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE HISTORIAN. 



There was a time when the works of Tacitus were far 
more familiar to English readers than they are now, 
— when sages like Bacon, and historians like Clarendon, 
drew from them moral and political adages, and ap- 
pealed to them as manuals for statesmen. But in 
proportion as the power of the Crown in this country- 
has diminished, and that of Parliament increased, the 
chronicler of ten Caesars has ceased to be an oracle for 
our public men. He shares the fate of Cicero — he 
lives almost in name alone. 

Quite otherwise is it with his reputation in Europe, 
and especially in France. There Tacitus is still rev- 
erenced, and often consulted as a guide for statists, 
historians, and orators. If we except the work of 
Dean Merivale, the merits of which are so obvious 
that it would be almost impertinent to praise it in 
this little volume, it would be difficult to name any 
treatise on the ' History ' or ' Annals ' that has been 
written by an Englishman worth reading : while, on 
the other hand, it would be tedious to enumerate the 
French or German writers who, in the present cen- 
tury alone, have either built on the foundations of 
Tacitus, or thrown new light on his works. 



184 TACITUS. 

The different tone of the ' History ' and ' Annals • 
has already been hinted at ; probably had the reign 
of Domitian come down to us, it would be found that 
the later books of the ' History ' were a preparation, 
at least in the spirit pervading them, for the records 
of the Julian arid Claudian Caesars. That the 
' Annals ' place the emperors in a most unfavourable 
light has often been noted. Voltaire, who was by no 
means a partisan of kings in general, and Napoleon the 
First, who may have had a fellow-feeling with military 
despots, have both pointed out the bias of Tacitus, and 
maintained that in the 'Annals ' at least we have a poli- 
tical satire, rather than a fair or trustworthy narrative. 

Could we read some of the authors whom Tacitus 
had before him while engaged on his latest work, — 
still more, could we peep into some of the family 
journals of the time — for the upper classes in Eome at 
all times kept journals of public events or private 
feuds, — we might very probably obtain a clue to the 
spirit which guided him in the selection and structure 
of the ■ Annals/ Vanity, or the desire for sympathy 
from an audience, led the keepers of such journals or 
memoirs to read them occasionally to a few particular 
friends, and these friends appear to have been not 
always discreet, and even occasionally faithless, and so 
the contents of these private papers got wind, and 
reached the ears of some vigilant informer, and the 
journalist had every reason to rej)ent of having been 
so communicative. " I remember," writes Seneca the 
rhetorician, " hearing Labienus recite portions of a 
manuscript which he entitled ' History : ' now and 
then he would pass over many pages of the scroll in 
his hand, saying, this must not be read until after my 



THE HISTORIAN. 185 

decease." Apparently there was some very treasonable 
matter in Labienus's ' History/ since he avoided the 
trouble of being put to death by burying himseJf alive 
in the tomb of his ancestors ; and his book, after his 
death, was ordered by the senate to be publicly burnt. 
Nor did Tacitus confine his attention to private 
memoirs. He plumes himself on not excluding tales, 
resting on common rumour only, from his ' Annals.' 
Drusus Caesar, the son of Tiberius, was poisoned by 
Sejanus, and his partner in guilt, Livia. But there was 
another version of the story, which Tacitus disbelieved, 
yet which he cannot refrain from repeating. The 
story was this : that Sejanus contrived to poison the 
cup which Drusus was -about to present to his father, 
and warned Tiberius not to drink out of it. Drusus, 
having no suspicion of the fraud, drained the poisoned 
chalice, and Tiberius was persuaded that his son 
committed suicide through dread of being discovered. 
Tacitus says — " In my account of the death of Drusus, 
the best and most authentic of historians have been 
my guides. A report, however, which found credit 
at the time, and has not yet died out, ought not to be 
omitted. " He admits that " the report cannot stand 
the test of examination." He gives excellent reasons 
for disbelieving it. He says, in another portion of the 
'Annals/ that Borne was the most credulous and 
scandalous of cities ; and yet he cannot refrain, scepti- 
cal as he was, from telling and commenting upon this 
monstrous story. The true reason peeps out at the 
last. The story furnished him with an arrow against 
the Caesar. " The truth is," he writes, " Sejanus was 
capable of every species of villainy, however atrocious : 
the emperor's partiality for him increased the number 



186 TACITUS. 

of his enemies ; and, both the sovereign and the fav- 
orite being objects of public detestation, malignity 
itself could coin no tale so black, and even improbable, 
that men were not willing to believe." 

The drift of the ' Annals ' can hardly be mistaken : 
it is an elaborate protest against Caesarianism : it is 
also, what Pliny's ' Panegyric ' was directly, an in- 
direct encomium on Trajan. Nothing is more agree- 
able to the ears of a new dynasty than a picture of a 
former one drawn with the darkest colours. A golden 
age has come : an iron age has passed away. 

" Tacitus," observes Dean Merivale, " constructs the 
history of the empire with reference to a dominant 
idea in his own mind." It was such an " idea" that, in 
his writings on the French Eevolution, misled and in- 
deed perverted the genius of Burke, and rendered the 
veteran champion of English liberty the advocate of a 
corrupt monarchy and a still more corrupt Church. 
It was a fixed belief with Tacitus that Eonie owed all 
her greatness to a senatorial government, or rather to 
an oligarchy. In feeling and in theory he was a 
patrician of the patricians ; and consequently he attri- 
buted to Caesarian usurpation the decline and decay of 
Eome. The battle of Actium was for him the Hegira 
from which dated the beginning of evil days. Eome, 
governed by consuls and tribunes chosen by a free 
people, was virtuous and valiant ; governed by despots, 
she was profligate and faint-hearted. The once noble 
and patriotic senators were succeeded by a sordid and 
servile race, who, shrinking like dogs under the hunts- 
man's whip, crouched under their lords in peace, and 
did not resent humiliation in war. Julius Caesar had 
admitted to the benches of the senate, Gauls, Spani- 



TEE HISTORIAN. 187 

ards, and Africans : upstart foreigners and enfranchised 
bondmen, it was said, sat beside men whose forefathers 
had expelled the Tarquins, and humbled the pride of the 
Marsian and the Samnite ; two-thirds of the conscript 
fathers might have been puzzled, if asked to produce 
their pedigree. It was the policy of the last and noblest 
of dictators to extend the privileges of Roman citizens 
to the provincials, and to recruit the senate with the 
best subjects of the empire. But this wise as well as 
generous scheme was an abomination to the historian. 

A very slight acquaintance with the annals of Rome 
in the last century of the commonwealth is sufficient 
to dispel the illusion that, as a city, having merely 
municipal laws and functions, she was great ; but as 
the head of an empire reaching from the Euphrates to 
the Atlantic, from the Grampian mountains to the first 
cataract of the Nile, mean and inglorious. As for the 
city, in the good days envied and extolled by the 
historian, we have Cicero's authority for describing it 
as a theatre in which " domestic fury and fierce civil 
strife " were almost annually the performances ; and as 
for the provinces, until they found Caesars for their pro- 
tectors, they were the unvarying scene of the most cruel 
and covetous tyranny that, if we except Asiatic despot- 
isms, ever afflicted the human race. Even the poet Lucan, 
whose ' Pharsalia ' is really an indictment of Caesar and 
the Marian party, does not disguise the licentiousness 
of the era which he and Tacitus profess to lament. 

Even from translations English readers may derive 
very fair conceptions of the Satires of Juvenal and the 
writings of Tacitus — -at all events, so far as to perceive 
that the poet confirms many opinions on -men and 
manners held by the historian. Living in the same 



188 TA CITU8. 

age, though probably moving in different circles of 
society, they both bear witness to the general profligacy 
of life in Kome. But there is a difference in their 
portraits of it. Tacitus, not concealing the depravity 
of the upper classes, ascribes it to the evil example set 
by the emperors. Juvenal, in this respect more im- 
partial, shows us that there was, in many a noble 
house, a Nero or a Domitian. Keeping ever in view 
his repugnance to the system of government framed by 
Augustus, the historian concentrates in the Csesars 
themselves the vices that w r ere common to the age. 
But long before there was an emperor there were im 
perial vices in Eome. But the profligacy, political or 
personal, of consuls and senators, had not a Tacitus 
to brand it, and we are left to infer from other writers 
the enormities of the commonwealth in its later years. 
The speeches and letters of Cicero alone supply suf- 
ficient evidence that the crimes of the emperors had 
been at least rehearsed by the nobles of his time : that 
the vices of the palace had been practised in the halls 
of conscript fathers. The exaggerations of an orator, 
however, are allowed for by hearers or readers of his 
speeches ; and how often Cicero fluctuated, as his in- 
terest at the moment required, in his judgment of 
public men, is palpable in his letters. He merely used 
the common privilege of barristers and political writers 
in every age, to exhibit his friends in the fairest and 
his foes in the foulest light. Tacitus is a prosecutor 
of the Caesars — those at least who are described in the 
' Annals ' — quite as much as Marcus Tullius was of 
Catiline or Antonius. But his accusations and in- 
sinuations are rarely called in question : and carried 
away by the force and beauty of his language, by the 



THE HISTORIAN. 189 

skilful arrangement of his facts, and his enthusiasm 
for republican virtues, the reader of his works, passive 
in his hands, often yields implicit evidence to his 
record of imperial enormities. 

Tacitus admits that the affairs of Tiberius, Caius 
(Caligula), Claudius, and Nero were misrepresented 
while they survived by fear, and after their deaths, by 
hatred; and, as regards Nero, this admission is repeated 
by Josephus. There is, indeed, reason for believing 
that the odium in which Tiberius was held, increased 
as time went on. In spite, however, of this statement, 
the historian throughout the ' Annals ' appears to lean 
to the detractor's side, and represents the Claudian 
and Julian Caesars in the spirit of his own generation ; 
the third, that is, after their respective reigns. In the 
time both of the Flavian emperors and of Nerva and 
Trajan, there was a strong reaction against the des- 
potism of the earlier dynasty ; — a recoil from the ex- 
travagance of the Caian, Claudian, and JSeronian 
period. From the bondage in which the senate was 
held by the emperors, from the influence of women 
and freedmen, and the liberty, or more truly the 
licence, granted to public informers, a writer con- 
temporary with Trajan, and one who had escaped from 
the caprices of Domitian, naturally looked back on a 
period of general misrule with aversion on a par with 
that which the Long Parliament felt for the adminis- 
tration of Charles, Strafford, Buckingham, and Laud, 
or with that which the statesmen of 1789 felt for the 
Bastille, the taxes and services of the ancient regime, 
and its feudal and royal abuses. ' Towards the earlier 
emperors, perhaps not excluding Augustus, the feelings 
of Tacitus may be aptly conveyed in the words which 



190 TACITCS. 

vSliakespeare puts into the mouth of Cassius, when 
denouncing the usurpation of the First Caesar : — 

" Age, thou art shamed : 
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods ! 
When went there by an age, since the great flood, 
But it was fam'd with more than one man ? 
When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome, 
That her wide walks encompassed but one man ? 
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough, 
When there is in it but one only man. 
O ! you ard I have heard our fathers say, 
There was a Brutus once, that would have brooked 
The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome, 
As easily as a king." 

In the pages of Tacitus there is often a spirit visible 
akin to that of Dante. The Roman indeed had not 
the advantage of the Florentine in a sure and certain 
faith that there was a region of bale reserved for his 
political enemies, and accordingly could not exhibit 
Tiberius in a red-hot tomb like Farinata's, nor im- 
prison Nero in a pool of ice, like the Archbishop 
Ruggieri. But he did all that lay in his power 
to make both of these emperors infamous for ever, 
and in the following words of the ' Annals/ points 
at the secret tortures that await the wicked even on 
earth. Tiberius had addressed a letter to the senate, 
in which were the following words (the English 
reader may be reminded that we have not the letter 
itself, and so cannot divine the context of these words, 
which may merely have related to physical sufferings) : 
" What to write, conscript fathers — in what terms to 
express myself, or what to refrain from writing — is 
a matter of such perplexity, that if I knew how to 



THE EIST0R1AX. 191 

decide, may the just gods, and the goddesses of ven- 
geance, doom me to die in pangs, worse than those 
under which I linger every day." " We have here," 
proceeds the historian, " the features of the inward man. 
His crimes retaliated upon him with the keenest retri- 
bution ; so true is the saying of the great philosopher 
[Socrates], the oracle of ancient wisdom, that if the 
minds of tyrants were laid open to our view, we should 
see them gashed and mangled with the whips and 
stings of horror and remorse. By blows and stripes 
the .flesh is made to quiver, and, in like manner, 
cruelty and inordinate passions, malice and evil deeds, 
become internal executioners, and with unceasing tor- 
ture goad and lacerate the heart. Of this truth 
Tiberius is a melancholy instance. Neither the im- 
perial dignity, nor the gloom of solitude, nor the rocks 
of Caprese, could shield him from himself. He lived 
on the rack of guilt, and his wounded spirit groaned 
in agony." Such a passage as this would have har- 
monised with the gloom of the ' Inferno.' In the 
opening stanzas of the ' Purgatorio,' Dante records his 
sense of relief from the regions of sorrow, and return 
to the light of day : — 

" O'er better waves to speed her rapid course 
The light bark of my genius lifts the sail, 
Well pleased to leave so cruel sea behind, 
And of that second region will I sing." 

[Cary's Translation.] 

And in the ' Agricola/ we find a corresponding wel- 
come to the advent of Xerva and Trajan : "At length 
we begin to revive from our lethargy : the Emperor 
Xerva, in the beginning of this glorious era, has found 
means to reconcile two things, till now deemed incom- 



192 TACITUS. 

patible, — civil liberty and the prerogative of the prince : 
and his successor Trajan continues to heal our wounds, 
and, by a just and wise administration, to diffuse the 
blessings of peace and good order through every part 
of the empire. Hopes are conceived of the constitution 
by all orders of men, and not conceived only, but ris- 
ing every hour into confidence and public security. " 

Perhaps the affinity of his works to modern rather 
than ancient history may account for their mutilation. 
Their author strode before his time, and accordingly 
the men of the time could not relish his productions. 
Centuries passed by before Tacitus attracted the notice 
and attained the rank due to him among the great 
writers of antiquity. Pliny the younger, indeed, and 
a narrow circle of personal friends, awaited with deep 
interest, and doubtless, when they were published, 
crowned with zealous applause, each of his great 
works. But beyond that circle Tacitus apparently 
was little known. At the time he was writing nearly 
all narrative was assuming a biographical form ; and 
hence Suetonius and his followers, the wretched 
chroniclers of the Caesars from the death of Trajan to 
Constantine — the so-called " Augustan historians" — 
were read eagerly, while Tacitus slumbered on the 
shelf. His namesake, if not his remote relative, the 
emperor, directed that copies of all his writings should 
be made and deposited in every great library of the 
empire. But the reign of Tacitus, the Caesar, was too 
brief for his instructions to be carried out ; and indeed 
the times were too perturbed for literature of the 
highest order to be much in request. The gravity of 
the historian's temper, his concise style, his profound 
thought, were not favourable to the preservation of 



THE HISTORIAN. 193 

his manuscripts in ages when shallow and superficial 
authors were in vogue ; and it is among the ironies of 
fate that we have nearly complete the works of such 
epitomists as Elorus, Eutropius, and Aurelius Victor, 
while at least thirty books of the most consummate 
of Eoman chroniclers have fallen a prey to oblivion. 
A tardy compensation was indeed awarded to Tacitus, 
but far too late to atone for the injury he received 
from the negligence or caprice of his own countrymen. 
Gradually such portions of his writings as we have 
now were rescued piecemeal from the worms or the 
damp of their hiding-places ; but not until the begin- 
ning of the sixteenth century of our era were the first 
five books of the ' Annals' found in the Abbey of 
Cernay, in Westphalia, and published for the first 
time at Eome, in 1515. From that date, with few 
dissenting voices, the historian has been the object of 
honour and applause. Bayle prono meed the 'Annals' 
and ' History ' one of the grandest efforts of human 
intellect. That consummate scholar, Justus Lipsius, 
was so deeply versed in the books of Tacitus, that he 
offered to recite any passage with a dagger at his breast 
to be used against himself on a failure of memory. 
Politicians and philosophers, from the sixteenth cen- 
tury downwards, have regarded him as an oracle, in 
practical and speculative wisdom alike. That keen 
commentator on the foibles and vices of mankind, the 
essayist Montaigne, speaks of him with unusual enthu- 
siasm; the greatest of Italian historians, Machiavelli, 
took Tacitus for his model ; and the recreation of the 
great French mathematician D'Alernbert, was to read 
the ' Annals ' or the ' History ' in those moments when 
he " let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause." 
a. c. vol. xvii n 



194 TACITUS. 

It is well observed by Heeren that, " of all political 
characters, Demosthenes is the most sublime and 
purely tragic with which history is acquainted. When 
still stirred by the vehement force of his language — 
when reading his life in Plutarch — when transferring 
ourselves into his times and situation — we are carried 
away by a deeper interest than is excited by any hero 
in epic or tragic poem. What a crowd of emotions 
must have struggled through his breast amid the inter- 
change of hope and despair for Athenian freedom ! 
How natural was it that the lines of melancholy and of 
indignation, such as we yet behold in his bust, should 
have been imprinted on his severe countenance ! " 

We have no authentic bust of Tacitus. Yet it is 
not difficult to imagine him to have been, like the great 
Athenian orator, a man on whose features alternate 
hope and despair had traced deep lines. Knowing so 
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it is evident from the ' Agricola ' alone that he was not 
sanguine in expectation, while there can be no doubt, 
from the general tenor of his works, that he was sar- 
castic — a man of whom it might fairly be said, — 

" He reads much : 
He is a great observer, and he looks 
Quite through the deeds of men : 
Seldom he smiles ; and smiles in such a sort 
As if he mocked himself, and scorned his spirit 
That could be moved to smile at anything." 

— Julius Csesar, act i. 



END OF TACITUS. 



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Life of John Adams. Begun by John Quincy 
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